He felt her hand on his thigh, warming his tingling muscles.
"In fact, I wasn't so far wrong. My left ear's not so good, and maybe that's part of the problem. You know that, but did you know that my left eye's weaker than my right?"
"I didn't," she said. "But thanks for telling me."
"And my left foot's smaller than my right. My dad used to say that I was 'all right'. Funny guy, my dad. That was his best English joke. He was proud of it." He didn't want to tell her any more but he couldn't stop. "Ironic, my issues with airports. Cause up to that point, I believed I wanted to travel the world when I grew up. Used to have a model plane I took everywhere with me. A spitfire. War plane. Type 356-Mk 22. Teardrop canopy. Built it from a kit. Painted it camouflage colours. Green, light and dark brown. But the nose, for some reason, I painted the nose a dark blue. The underbelly was a pale cream. Apart from the decals on the wingtips, the eyes. They were blue, like the nose, and I spent a long time with a fine brush giving them perfect little evenly spaced eyelashes."
"Charlie."
"My mum bought me the plane. She worked for a travel agency. Spent her days selling holidays to places she never saw herself. I'd never flown before. I don't remember her flying either. Just that once. My dad left us nothing. Just disappeared without even saying goodbye. She married that rich fuck, George, who was able to take her places she'd only dreamed about. But that was a long time later. My dad, Pablo, he just walked away one day without so much as a goodbye kiss."
"Charlie."
"As a kid, that plane represented an escape route. And yeah, those guns fitted in the wings were probably significant, too."
"Charlie." She put her hand on his shoulder.
"Am I a monster?" he asked her.
She squeezed, fingers massaging the muscle. "Maybe in some people's eyes," she said.
"In my mother's, you mean."
She turned her head slightly, glanced through the loose chickenwire partition into the back. "Yes."
Carlos checked the rearview. Too dark to see much. But his brain compensated for the limitations of his eyes and he made out the bodybag, the heavy chains, the petrol cans, the holdall. "And in yours?"
She didn't reply.
"Well?"
"I'm here, ain't I?" she said.
"You are," he said. "I'm sorry about that."
She gave a little laugh. "It's okay."
But that wasn't what he'd meant.
"Tell me about you," he said.
"What do you mean?"
He wanted to know everything. There were plenty of things she hadn't told him. Not just the reason she'd taken out the contract on his mother. No, other things. Trivial things. Things he shouldn't care about but which seemed to matter now. He didn't know if there'd been a sandpit at her infant school; didn't know the name of the boy she first held hands with; didn't know if she could ride a horse; didn't know the name of her favourite dolls or teddy bears; didn't know her mother's maiden name.
Sentimentality. He had to put a stop to it. Think of something else.
He pictured them dragging the bodybag out of the van, laying it on the ground. He heard himself tell Maggie he wanted to say goodbye. Saw himself pull down the zipper. Jordan's face staring back at him. "Come closer," Carlos said to Maggie. "Say a few words." She kept her distance, a few feet away, said she'd rather not. He nodded, said he understood. He pulled the zipper all the way down. He said, "Okay," to Jordan and the kid sat up, hair matted to his forehead from the heat inside the bodybag, gun in his hand. And Carlos said to Maggie, "Are you sure there isn't anything you'd like to say?"
If she still didn't confess, facing certain death like that, then Carlos could assume it wasn't her who'd arranged the contract. And maybe he could let her go, like he'd promised his mother. Jordan, they'd agreed, was just to scare Maggie into admitting her guilt. Whatever happened afterwards, they'd have to divorce. He'd make sure he got custody. That wouldn't be a problem.
Course, the reality was that Carlos couldn't think of a scenario that didn't end up with Maggie having to take a long nap in the bodybag.
That's what he meant. It made his heart twitch.
But for now, all he said was, "Nothing. It doesn't matter."
A few minutes later, they were driving along a country road and Carlos was remembering his first time with Maggie — how she'd led him into his bedroom, yanked his trousers down to his knees, buried her head in his crotch, and moaned as she sucked and moaned and took her head away briefly to say fuck fuck fuck yeah and sucked and moaned until he spasmed and shuddered like a man in an electric chair, and then after she cleaned up with her t-shirt, she steered his mouth from nipple to nipple to bellybutton to crotch, telling him what he should do and where and how hard and fast and deep until she came in a series of fuck fuck fuck yeahs, but he just couldn't get it up again no matter how she coaxed and teased, so they didn't fuck until the following weekend — when he saw a flashing light in the rearview.
Couldn't be. Not now.
" Mierda," he said.
"What?" Maggie asked.
"Behind us."
She looked over her shoulder. "Shit. So much for my idea of taking the back roads."
"Just our fucking luck. You'd think the cops would have something better to do with their time than haul us up at two in the morning." He couldn't think of a way out of this.
"We'll have to pull over," Maggie said, confirming that she was out of ideas too.
"With a corpse in the back?"
"What do you suggest? This piece of junk can't outrun a police car."
She was right. They didn't have a choice. He slowed to a crawl.
The police car overtook them, pulled into the side of the road, and stopped.
Carlos swore. He kept swearing. Puta, puta, puta. Fuck.
After a bit, somebody climbed out of the car. A young guy. Late teens, maybe. He wasn't in uniform.
"He's not a cop," Carlos said to Maggie.
"Maybe he's a detective."
"Too young."
"Whoever he is, he's got a gun."
So he did. And he was pointing it their way.
But it was okay.
"Don't worry," Carlos said. "That's a Glock. Almost definitely a replica." Cause even Carlos, with all his connections, found it almost impossible to buy a reasonably priced fully operational Glock these days. He owned one once, but Richie's crazy dad had stolen it just before he got himself killed. Carlos didn't know for sure, but he suspected it was the same gun Jordan had used that night at the cottage. Unlike tonight, where he'd had to give Jordan a converted Valtro 98 "gas alarm" pistol. Lot of them about at the moment. Good business in buying replicas in bulk in Berlin, smuggling them into the UK, and adapting them to fire live rounds. So Carlos was told. But Glocks? Apparently they were hard to come by, priced accordingly. Supply and demand. But there were shitloads of replicas sold before the ban was introduced in October last year. So either this cop-teenager had more money than was likely, or that was a replica in his hand. Carlos was betting on the latter.
What the fucker was doing out here in a police car pretending to be a cop with a Glock, Carlos had no idea. He smiled, wound down the window, stuck his head out. Felt good to get some cool air on his skin. The night smelt of fox piss and rapeseed. " Problemo, Officer?"
The guy said nothing. Got closer to the car. "Turn off the engine and get out."
"Why?"
He waved the gun in Maggie's direction. His hand was big, fingers thick, looked swollen. "Tell him."
That was interesting. Almost as if he knew her.