It’s four minutes to three as he heads south west down Birkenhead Road on the other side of the Mersey. He’d crossed the great wide dock of East Float and crossed it again, tracking over every one of the Four Bridges, lost. Forty-five minutes later, he’d fetched up at the Seacombe Ferry terminal, with just a handrail between him and the muddy waters of the Mersey. He could happily have thrown himself in, had a kindly ferryman not asked him if he was off to the parade, and given him clear directions to Wheatland Lane, where he might stand on the bridge and wave to the queen. He barrels along, the little car’s engine screaming, past a stretch of blasted landscape. His heart is beating like an Orange Man’s Lambeg. It’s two minutes before the hour. She’ll give her speech on the Liverpool side, then motor through to Wallasey; giving him time to find a spot. He will deliver the message for Father O’Brien. He almost misses the sharp turn westward and wrestles the wheel right. The gun slides in his lap, and he catches it, tucking it firmly in his waistband.
He’s driving full into the afternoon sun, now; it scorches his face, burning through the windscreen, and he yanks the visor down. A sheet of paper flutters onto the dashboard. His foot hard on the pedal, he picks it up, squints at it as he powers towards the bridge.
It’s a note, written on lined paper, in a child’s neat handwriting:
‘Dear Mister,
I came to see you at the hotel but you weren’t there. I wanted to say to your face that I am truly sorry I stole Father O’Brien’s present. My sister says it’s a Mortal Sin to steal from a Priest. I waited for ages, but the manager told me to push off, and he would of got me arrested if I didn’t so I couldn’t stay. My sister said it would be O.K. if I wrote you a message instead. So I hope you will forgive me and ask Father to forgive me as well. I never opened it or nothing, so I hope it will be O.K. and that you will forgive me.
Sorry.
PS — I put it back esac exacly like I found it.
His eyes widen. He hits the brakes. The car skids, turning ninety degrees, sliding sideways along the empty road. He reaches for the door, but his fingers seem too big, too clumsy to work the handle, he can’t seem to get a grip of the lever. He can’t seem to—
The thin, electronic beep of the electronic clock in the bag under his seat sounds a fraction of a second before the flash. Then the windows shatter and the grey bodywork blows apart like a tin can on a bonfire.
Fedora
John Harvey
When they had first met, amused by his occupation, Kate had sent him copies of Hammett and Chandler, two neat piles of paperbacks, bubble-wrapped, courier-delivered. A note: If you’re going to do, do it right. Fedora follows. He hadn’t been certain exactly what a fedora was.
Jack Kiley, private investigator. Security work of all kinds undertaken. Ex-Metropolitan Police.
Most of his assignments came from bigger security firms, PR agencies with clients in need of baby sitting, steering clear of trouble; solicitors after witness confirmation, a little dirt. If it didn’t make him rich, most months it paid the rent: a second-floor flat above a charity shop in north London, Tufnell Park. He still didn’t have a hat.
Till now.
One of the volunteers in the shop had taken it in. ‘An admirer, Jack, is that what it is?’
There was a card attached to the outside of the box: Chris Ruocco of London, Bespoke Tailoring. It hadn’t come far. A quarter mile, at most. Kiley had paused often enough outside the shop, coveting suits in the window he could ill afford.
But this was a broad-brimmed felt hat, not quite black. Midnight blue? He tried it on for size. More or less a perfect fit.
There was a note sticking up from the band: on one side, a quote from Chandler; on the other a message: Ozone, tomorrow. 11am? Both in Kate Keenan’s hand.
He took the hat back off and placed it on the table alongside his mobile phone. Had half a mind to call her and decline. Thanks, but no thanks. Make some excuse. Drop the fedora back at Ruocco’s next time he caught the overground from Kentish Town.
It had been six months now since he and Kate had last met, the premiere of a new Turkish — Albanian film to which she’d been invited, Kiley leaving halfway through and consoling himself with several large whiskies in the cinema bar. When Kate had finally emerged, preoccupied by the piece she was going to write for her column in the Independent, something praising the film’s mysterious grandeur, its uncompromising pessimism — the phrases already forming inside her head — Kiley’s sarcastic ‘Got better, did it?’ precipitated a row which ended on the street outside with her calling him a hopeless philistine and Kiley suggesting she take whatever pretentious arty crap she was going to write for her bloody newspaper and shove it.
Since then, silence.
Now what was this? A peace offering? Something more?
Kiley shook his head. Was he really going to put himself through all that again? Kate’s companion. Cramped evenings in some tiny theatre upstairs, less room for his knees than the North End at Leyton Orient; standing for what seemed like hours, watching others genuflect before the banality of some Turner Prize winner; another mind-numbing lecture at the British Library; brilliant meals at Moro or the River Café on Kate’s expense account; great sex.
Well, thought Kiley, nothing was perfect.
Ozone, or to give it its proper title, Ozone Coffee Roasters, was on a side street close by Old Street station. In full view in the basement, industrial-size roasting machines had their way with carefully harvested beans from the best single-estate coffee farms in the world — Kiley had Googled the place before leaving — while upstairs smart young people sat either side of a long counter or at heavy wooden tables, most of them busy at their laptops as their flat whites or espressos grew cold around them. Not that Kiley had anything against a good flat white — twenty-first century man, or so he sometimes liked to think, he could navigate his way round the coffee houses in London with the best of them.
Chalked on a slate at the front of one of the tables was Kate Keenan’s name and a time, 11.00, but no Kate to be seen.
Just time to reassess, change his mind.
Kiley slid along the bench seat and gave his order to a waitress who seemed to be wearing mostly tattoos. Five minutes later, Kate arrived.
She was wearing a long, loose crepe coat that swayed around her as she walked; black trousers, a white shirt, soft leather bag slung over one shoulder. Her dark hair was cut short, shorter than he remembered, taking an extra shine from the lighting overhead. As she approached the table her face broke into a smile. She looked Kiley thought, allowing himself the odd ageist indiscretion, lovelier that any forty-four year old woman had the right.
“Jack, you could at least have worn the hat.”
“Saving it for a special occasion.”
“You mean this isn’t one?”
“We’ll see.”
She kissed him on the mouth.
“I’m famished,” she said. “You going to eat?”
“I don’t know.”
“The food’s good. Very good.”
There was an omelette on the menu, the cost, Kiley reckoned, of a meal at McDonald’s or Subway for a family of five. When it came it was fat and delicious, stuffed with spinach, shallots and red pepper and bright with the taste of fresh chillis. Kate had poached eggs on sourdough toast with portobello mushrooms. She’d scarcely punctured the first egg when she got down to it.
“Jack, a favour.”
He paused with his fork half-way to his mouth.
“Graeme Fisher, mean anything to you?”