Undone (33 page)

I sit back on my heels and then I stand. Her juices cool on my face. Her cheeks and chest are mottled with heat, her mouth slack. She looks at me. Her eyes are far away. Vacant. I sweep a strand of blonde hair from her forehead and lean in for a kiss. She turns her head aside. Ah, hell. What’s to become of us?

‘Thank you,’ I say. Man, that sounds awful, as if I’m thanking her for her pussy, but what I mean is, thank you for not hanging me out to dry. I release her raised hands and unwind the tie from her wrists. As she steps away from the door, I slip off my jacket and hang it from one of the hooks.

I want to squeeze her to my chest but instead I say, ‘You want me to fix you another brandy? Then you can tell me about this accident?’

‘Take your clothes off first,’ she says. ‘Quid pro quo.’

Well, I’m good with that. So I strip and hang my clothes on the door hooks. I don’t want to assume I’m staying the night but, at this point, I’m hoping. And so is my dick because it’s bouncing around like this is party time. Hush, I want to say. There is no party.

I take our glasses. In the other room, I top up my bourbon and pour her a hefty measure of brandy. I’m about to return but she comes to join me. She’s got this dark brown blanket over her shoulders and it trails behind her like a poor man’s version of a regal cape. Without a word, she drops onto the sofa. She tucks her knees under her chin, and flicks the blanket around her like a tail. Her hand emerges from the heap when I pass her the glass of brandy. She looks like whipped chocolate.

‘At Dravendene, afterwards, you fell asleep fast,’ she begins. ‘You always do. I was still alert. So was he. We were chatting. You were snoring.’

I take a seat on the opposite end of the sofa. ‘Yeah, sorry about that.’

‘I told him I was disappointed the pool wasn’t open because I’m a swimmer. I feel ropey if I don’t swim every day. Misha said he’d heard there was some problem with the heating so they’d had to keep the poolhouse closed. Then he said if I had a hair grip, he could try picking the lock. It just seemed a fun thing to do. Rebellious. Silly. Drunk. He got dressed, saying he’d probably go back to his room after our swim. I was pleased about that. The bed wasn’t big enough for three people. And I liked you the best.’ She blinks hard, looks away for a second or two before continuing. ‘So I fished out a couple of bobby pins from my make-up bag and wrapped a towel around me. Couldn’t see the point of wearing my bikini when we’d been fucking for the last couple of hours. And swimming naked is glorious. Water flowing over every inch of skin. Like silk lapping at your body. Blue silken liquid. Trying to slide into all your openings, sneak into your secrets. I wanted that. So soothing.’

I see a hint of pleasure in her eyes, the suggestion of a smile on her lips. Then her expression hardens and she takes a sip of brandy.

‘We went via that secret stairway he showed us,’ she goes on. ‘We didn’t see a soul. He twiddled with the poolhouse lock for ages. I could hear a few people still in the garden on the other side of the house. I was starting to worry he might damage the lock but then we were inside, and it was fine. He opened the panel to a little alcove at the back, flicked switches until we had just a couple of spotlights underneath the water. The surface was perfectly flat, not a ripple, and the beams were sharp. You could see the tiles of the pool. It looked so inviting. Everything else around us was dark. We didn’t want to attract attention. The statues on the poolside looked kind of spooky. As if they might move when you weren’t looking.

‘The place was hot in the morning when we found him, so hot and stuffy. I’m not sure what dials and knobs he messed with, but I guess he demonstrated their heating system was screwed. Anyway, I dipped my toe in the water and it was cold. Really cold. Colder than at the swimming baths. But you just have to get in and swim, and you’re warm in no time. So I tossed my towel on a plastic lounger and I dived in. As soon as my head hit the water, I realised I was drunk. Knew I shouldn’t be doing this. The cold was fierce, like a slap in the face. Everything had this hyper-clarity to it. Bubbles streaming from my lips, splashes jumping with every stroke, spotlights wobbling in the water. I swim front crawl, I’m fast. I did six lengths in no time but it was exhausting. My muscles ached. So I climbed out. I was heading for my towel. He was naked by now and half erect. He grabbed me.’

‘Ah, hell,’ I murmur. Now I’m the one with a hand clamped to my mouth, horrified.

‘I laughed, pushed him off,’ she says. ‘I was breathless. “I want to fuck you more,” he said. He grabbed me again. I pushed back again. My foot skidded on the wet tiles. Just a little but enough to make me wary. I elbowed him away and I was heading for my towel when he grabbed me again. Harder this time, nastier. I could feel his cock against my hip. We tussled. I was slippery, he was dry. And stronger than me. He said crass, scary stuff. “I know you want it.” “Just one more time.” But I didn’t want it. Then we were close to the pool edge and I wriggled and pushed. I was shouting at him. I saw him fall into the pool. Heard the splash. I grabbed my towel and left. Didn’t look back. Just assumed he’d be OK. Lesson learned for him. Customer lost for me. But, yeah, not so simple. Because in the morning he was dead.’

‘Holy hell,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry. So sorry for all you’ve been through, Cha Cha.’

That self-loathing I mentioned? It’s back with bells on. Because these last couple of months I’ve been wracking my brains trying to work out if she’d killed him and, if so, why. Never even occurred to me it might be in selfdefence. My blindness shames me.

I want to haul her towards me for comfort but she’s still bundled up on the far side of the sofa. Whipped chocolate with brandy. Untouchable.

‘Who was he?’ she asks. ‘Why were you spying on him?’

‘He wasn’t a particularly nice man,’ I reply. ‘If that helps any. Or, at any rate, he was involved in a business that isn’t too nice. It’s much as Travis said. He was supplying pharmacy chemicals, pseudoephedrine to be exact, to a gang of local methamphetamine cooks. Or two gangs, according to Travis. That was news to me. As far as we can work out, Morozov wasn’t visiting your bar for any underhand reasons. Just liked a drink there. But, yeah, he was a key figure for us. We’ve been working to bust a major drugs ring that’s been gaining traction in the south-east. Crystal meth, Lana. It’s nasty shit. Generally requires a big hidden space to manufacture on a large scale but somehow, as far as we can tell, they’re managing to do it down here, not too far from London.’

Her eyes are glassy. ‘I killed a man,’ she says.

‘No you didn’t,’ I reply. ‘A man assaulted you. You pushed him. He died. It wasn’t your fault. You had every right to push him.’

‘But I killed him all the same.’

I shrug. ‘Maybe you did everyone a favour. Maybe some people are alive now, now and in the future, who wouldn’t be if he were still around.’

She shakes her head. ‘But it’s not for me to decide who gets to live or die, is it? Which lives are worth more than others.’

‘It was an accident, Lana. You didn’t decide. Try not to torment yourself with guilt.’

She sips her brandy and stares ahead at the wall. She looks numb.

‘Listen,’ I say. ‘Let me tell you about this drug. It destroys the brain’s dopamine receptors, makes it impossible to experience pleasure. Turns people into shells of themselves. A substance you take to get high ends up robbing you of the very thing you want. The very thing that makes life worth living. I don’t mean hedonism. I mean pleasure, joy, love. You get the absolute opposite of what you signed up for. Don’t know about you, but that makes me sick to the pit of my stomach. The drug’s abhorrent, totally fucking abhorrent, and so are those bastards getting rich off it.’

After a while, she says, ‘Thank you. For trying.’ Her lips tremble.

‘So do I get a hug for trying?’ I ask.

She gives a spluttering sort of half-laugh and sets her glass on the floor. I set down my own glass and hold out an arm to her. She scoots along the sofa towards me, tugging all that whipped chocolate mousse with her. She nestles into the crook of my arm and tucks a corner of the blanket across my lap. A tear smudges on my chest where she rests her head.

I hold her close and print a kiss on the top of her head. Her hair smells of apples.

Eventually she asks, ‘Who’s Ilya Travis?’

I keep my sigh as shallow as I can. ‘Real name Ilyas Zarakolu. Turkish born. Gun-runner, money-launderer, hitman. Or, at least, he’s adept at putting the pressure on when required. Has a couple of property businesses. Notoriously hard to pin anything on him but we’re getting closer. Or we were. And there’s a whole host of dubious characters we’ve been watching, trying to get the measure of the network. No point going in too soon.’ I sweep my fingers through her silky hair, drawing it back from her face, hooking it behind her ear. ‘I’m so sorry for what he … what he did to you.’

‘It was my choice.’

‘But not a free one,’ I say. ‘You were doing it for me.’

She strokes my chest, fingertips moving through hair in light little circles. ‘It’s like you’re my crystal meth,’ she murmurs. ‘I got the opposite of what I signed up for.’

Moments later, my face is wet and I’m shaking.

She twists in my arms and looks up at me, surprised.

It’s a while before I can find my voice. ‘All I ever wanted was to be the hero,’ I say. ‘The good guy who brings the bad guys down. But not at this cost. Not with these sacrifices. I’m sorry I got you involved in all of this. So fucking sorry, Cha Cha.’

She wipes away my tears with the flat of her hand.

‘I wasn’t going to leave you, I swear,’ I say. ‘Didn’t know what I was going to do but I knew I couldn’t walk out on you. We can get it back. We can make it work.’

She smiles stiffly and shakes her head. ‘No, we can’t, Sol.’

‘Lana, please!’

‘You’re a cop,’ she says calmly. ‘I’ve confessed to a crime.’

‘And so?’

‘So you have to arrest me,’ she says. ‘Report me. Or something. We have no future, Sol. We’re on opposite sides of the divide.’

‘Are you fucking serious?’ That she thinks I’d snitch on her makes me appreciate how little she feels she knows me. How little she trusts me. ‘I’ll take it to my grave, Cha Cha,’ I say. ‘It never happened. Like the threesome, like the towel. It never happened.’

‘Except it did. It all happened.’

‘We can move past it,’ I say. ‘Besides, the inquest’s been held. Finito.’

‘Unless there’s new evidence.’

‘There is
no
new evidence,’ I reply. ‘I didn’t hear a word you just said. Besides, it was a coroner’s inquest. There’s no police investigation going on. It’s over. Signed and sealed. Death by misadventure.’

She lies on my chest again, arm wrapped around me. We say nothing for a while, just hold each other. I rub her shoulder through the blanket.

‘How much of the diary is true?’ I ask.

‘All the important parts,’ she says. ‘All the parts about you, my feelings for you. That’s true. It started as a lie to myself, to make myself believe I hadn’t killed him. That someone else had been with him because of the towel. I had to explain the towel. Then I started to think I needed to convince you as well. And if I’d made out I suspected you of being with him when he died, then obviously it couldn’t be me.’

‘It’s a little crazy, Lana.’

She shrugs. ‘It’s not easy keeping it together when you’ve killed someone.’

‘And the page you ripped out?’ I say. ‘Was that about the accident?’

She nods against my chest. ‘I started to write about the night at the pool after I thought you’d left. I was losing it. Losing control. Of myself, of my journal. Some nights I hardly sleep at all. You’d found the towel in my flat. I thought you might start putting two and two together. Realise I’d killed him and the diary was a lie. I wasn’t sure if you were reading it but I hoped you were. But then I thought I’d made it worse because I’d never told you about the swimming. Then when I thought you’d left me, thought maybe you’d realised the truth. And I couldn’t save myself or us. So I started to write about what had really happened. Then I stopped. It wasn’t helping. So I ripped out the page and burned it.’

‘You sure you burned it?’

‘Yes. It’s gone.’

‘Good.’

I lean over to pick up my glass of bourbon from the floor. She rolls with me in my lap, allowing me to squash her a little; then we ease back. Inside the blanket, her hand drifts across my chest, back and forth, round and round.

‘Was the towel a sign?’ she asks. ‘A way to tell me to be careful? Or a warning or something?’

I laugh. ‘I guess I found it when I was looking for something else. Before I’d read any of your journal. I don’t even remember it. I’m a guy, Lana. I’m not going to notice if a towel doesn’t match your bathroom. The point of a towel is to dry a wet person.’

There’s a faint laugh from her. She twines her finger in my chest hair, making a tiny whirlpool between my pecs, just idly playing with my body much as she used to.

‘I thought you might have spotted it at Dravendene,’ she says. ‘When I came to tell you about Misha you were sitting on the edge of the bed. I didn’t wake you up. You were awake already. I was worried you might have gone to the bathroom before I arrived. Seen the towel, smelled the chlorine. I just dropped it on the floor when I got back from the pool and climbed into bed. I was like a hurt animal, wanting to hide and lick my wounds. I’m usually tidy but I wasn’t that night. That discarded towel’s cost me a lot of sleep since then.’

I shake my head. ‘That’s your guilt, Lana. It’s gotten you a bit obsessed about the towel. We should have a burning ceremony one day. Get rid of it for good.’

‘I’d like that,’ she replies. ‘I keep meaning to throw it out.’

It’s my first sign of hope, like a green spear in wintry ground. Spring. Growth. Renewal. Life.

I knock back my bourbon and set my glass on the ground. Inside the blanket, she ruffles the twist of hair she’s made on my chest, erasing it, and rubs across the breadth of me. She butts into the crook of my arm and her hand sweeps lower. She tips her head back, looks up at me, and cups a hand over my groin.