He grinned. “In a minute,” Kit said.
The kitchen staff came back sometime after midnight, to stand on the metal grid outside the closed window, insult each other and bitch about the chef. Although, after thirty seconds of listening to Amy, their bitching was reduced to the occasional whispered comment and stunned silence.
It was an impressive performance.
Having wrapped both arms around Kit’s neck and hooked her ankles over his, Amy clung so tight that every time Kit tried to pull back, he simply lifted her off the mattress. Yelping turned to something more urgent, as Amy grabbed his hips, jammed her nails through Kit’s skin, and began to ram him into her.
Spitting on his fingers, Kit reached under to spread Amy’s buttocks and eased one finger inside. So far as Kit could tell Amy’s orgasm was real. Her scream certainly was.
“Shit,” she said, when she got her breath back. “So that’s what closure feels like. I always wondered.” And before Kit had time to think that one through, she rolled him onto his back and dropped her head to his lap.
CHAPTER 43 — Saturday, 30 June
The dirt tracks and dunes of his original dreams had gone. Where once trucks had been driven by skeletons, a ragged matrix of dimly visible silver threads patterned the bowl of a silver sky.
Kit didn’t believe in souls or eternity, but was still blinded by both as they pulled tears from his sleeping eyes. His own soul had been lost in the sands, a voice told him. The last life taken in the cross-hairs had been his own, each shot splintering a little of what made him alive, until finally there was nothing left to splinter at all.
He had blown through Middle Morton that summer like a ghost, hungry for forgiveness and angry at the weakness this signified. The voice told him nothing that was new. He’d heard it all before. The voice was his.
Trapped in a half world between waking and sleep where everything was possible only because common sense refused to object, Kit opened his eyes to a tiny hotel room in Fitzrovia and tried to remember how he got there. And then he remembered.
The same way he usually did.
Amy lay across him, naked and snoring. A crumpled sheet was thrown back to reveal heavy breasts, a soft belly, and a butterfly tattoo on her hip. She still stank of unwashed hair and cigarettes, only now sex and sweat had added themselves to the mix.
About the only thing they’d missed out was tying each other to the bedstead, and that was only because Amy shrugged it off when Kit hesitated, offering him something far filthier instead. If Amy had bruises on her thighs, then Kit had scratches across his back and a vicious bite below his neck. Kit was wondering whether to wake Amy, or just start again anyway when a shrill buzz from his phone rewrote his day.
Only three people knew the number—Kate, Pat, and Neku. It was 8.00 on a Saturday morning, and even Kate would think twice about calling him that early.
“Me,” he announced, as he rolled out of bed.
All Kit got was silence.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hi, is that Kit?”
“Yes,” said Kit, realising he didn’t recognise the voice. “Who’s—”
“It’s Charlie. Are you still in London?”
“Of course I’m—” said Kit, then hesitated. Fire and ice, ripped sails where stars should be, the naked woman in the bed behind him, all irrelevant. He’d just remembered what the screen read when Charlie’s call came up.
Neku.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” said Charlie. “But she’s not here.”
“You slept over?”
“In your room,” he said, sounding instantly defensive.
“I’m not bothered about that,” said Kit. “How did you…”
“What is it?” Amy demanded. When Kit turned, he found her sitting up in bed behind him, arms folded across her breasts.
“Trouble,” said Kit, returning to his phone. “Look,” he said. “Charlie…how did you discover Neku was gone?”
“You had a delivery,” said the boy. “I went to get Neku because it needed a signature. The roof door was open but her hut was empty. This was about an hour ago.”
“An hour…”
“I thought she’d gone out. You know, to buy milk or something. So I waited to see if she’d come back. And then I noticed her bag on the floor of the little hut and thought I should call you.”
Charlie’s voice had grown formal and it took Kit a couple of seconds to realise why. He’d heard Amy. So now he knew Kit had missed supper to spend the night with someone. Since he’d gone to meet a police Inspector and not come back it didn’t take a genius to…
Kit sighed. “I’m on my way,” he said. Grabbing his trousers, he found his shirt and struggled into both. Yesterday’s socks were in a corner and his pants on the floor. He was just kicking his heels into his shoes when he caught sight of Amy’s face in the mirror, all hurt and hollow eyes. Someone else bailing out of her life.
When did he get to know this stuff? wondered Kit, turning back. “You coming with me?”
Amy shook her head, but some of the emptiness left her eyes.
“Look,” said Kit. “The kid’s gone missing. Think you can do something for me?”
“Maybe,” said Amy.
“I need the name of a police officer,” said Kit. “Large, slightly fat with a moustache and greased back hair…What?” he demanded, seeing her smile.
“Describes half the guys I know.”
“He was in an unmarked car on the M25 with whoever made that call to the DVLA. Pulled me over a few days back. It wasn’t the first time. A couple of days before that he came by Hogarth Mews asking about Mary O’Mally.”
“Section 44.”
“Yeah,” said Kit, “that’s the man.”
“I don’t suppose you got his registration plate?”
Kit gave her what he could remember, which was the year, the make of car, and a guess for the first two letters of what the plate might be.
“You want to know who he is?” Amy asked, jotting the details on a hotel pad by the bed.
“Also what he thinks I’ve done.”
“Maybe,” said Amy, “it’s what he thinks you’re going to do. You know, a lot of people are surprised you came back.” She hesitated on the edge of saying something else. “Take care,” Amy said finally.
“Say it,” said Kit.
“I just did.”
Peering from her flat, Sophie gave Kit one of the strangest looks he’d ever received and slammed her door without saying a word. A second later, she turned on her sound system and yanked up the volume, until whichever Rai mix she’d put on was loud enough to shake the stairs. Mixing with the enemy was obviously an unforgivable sin.
“Mrs. O’Mally just called,” said Charlie, when Kit opened the door to the flat. “I promised you’d call her back.”
Kit groaned; it was entirely instinctive. “What did you tell her?”
“Nothing,” said Charlie.
“She want to know who you were?”
The boy looked sheepish. “She already knew. Pat had called her last night. But I didn’t tell her about Neku,” he promised. “Well, not really. I said Neku was out shopping.”
“At 8.30 on a Saturday morning? What did Kate O’Mally say?”
“You should call her back. It’s in here,” Charlie added, nodding to the kitchen. “I signed for the package when I realised Neku had gone.” The teenager was torn between being cross with Kit and being worried; so far, worry was winning.
Kit left the box where it was, on the breakfast bar in the tiny kitchen, and went to look at Neku’s hut and the roof garden. The ivy on both sides of the door outside was undisturbed and none of the smaller pots had been knocked over. Neku’s sleeping bag had been left open but the zip still worked. When Kit checked the bottom of the bag a passport, an A–Z of London, and $1,500 fell out.