Eddy looked around the wetlands. ‘No.’
‘Will he?’
Eddy shut his eyes hard. He didn’t want to talk about this. ‘No.’
‘Good. What did they offer you?’
‘Forty grand.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Aye.’ Eddy felt tearful at the thought of forty grand. ‘Look, are you sure these people are pulling strokes?’
‘Intel is rock solid. Intel is local, gave us the layout of the house, everything.’
Eddy wondered at that, at the Irishman having the layout and not telling them about it. ‘Just, they seem kind of normal, the house isn’t all that big and there’s a million of them living in it.’
‘Pakis do that. Intel is solid. They’re playing hard ball. Accept the forty. Arrange a pick-up this morning.’
‘But forty grand’s fuck all-’
‘Cut and run, son. Call, accept, arrange for immediate pick-up.’
‘Then disappear?’ said Eddy hopefully, liking the fact that it all sounded like a training exercise, like a set of movements that guaranteed a successful mission.
Irish faltered. ‘Well… OK…?’
Eddy frowned at the non sequitur.
‘OK, look, I’ll tell ye what. Call, accept, arrange for pick-up this evening at seven o’clock, right?’
‘Why?’
A bluster of a sigh tickled Eddy’s eardrum. ‘Son, we do this all the time, never a hint of a worry, right? This one’s… complicated. Your first time, not a lot of… guidance. But I’ll say this for ye, son, you’ve shown real promise… Real promise.’
Eddy wasn’t stupid. He didn’t really think he had shown promise; he’d made a couple of mistakes, but he wondered how it looked from that side of the Irish Channel. He’d lied a lot. Maybe it looked better there than it did from here.
‘That’s to be encouraged. Need good men. Call, accept and arrange pick-up for seven, I’ll be off the ferry at five tonight. Meet me at the place at six-’ The voice stopped, the phone light went out and Eddy looked at it. His phone had run out of juice.
Aamir lifted a knee and took the next step and the next and the next, heading for the light. The water was there, moving water, a sea. He walked along a rough path, stumbling, lifting knee after knee until he got to the light. A torch. It was on the ground, flat, the precious light spilling wastefully over a patch of concrete. Behind it stood a figure wearing a good warm winter coat, hood up, facing out to sea. Aamir blinked and saw that he was holding a fishing rod.
He turned his face to Aamir, his hood unmoving, his face sliced in half. The man was Aamir’s age, Aamir’s height, a Scottish man.
‘Dear heavens,’ he said, ‘what in the name of God happened to you?’
32
Morrow’s eyes opened a fraction, searching for the red numbers on the alarm clock radio, but she woke up facing the wrong way, towards Brian’s side of the bed. The duvet was still tucked in, his pillow unflattened. She blinked again and rolled over towards the window. Morning scowled behind the curtains.
The alarm said 7.18. She could reasonably get up. Normally she would. She’d get up and leave him sleeping here for another forty minutes. She’d have the house to herself, listen to crap on the radio, eat toast, be alone, leave before he got up, but he was up already, out there, somewhere in the house.
She sat up, the duvet peeling off her, the warmth evaporating from it into the cold room. The heating was timed for 7.50. She liked the cold of the mornings, liked the prickle of chill on her face as she drank warm tea.
She sat up and looked at the closed bedroom door hatefully. She couldn’t stay in here. She needed a pee. Aware that she’d just opened her eyes and was already angry, she threw the rest of the warmth off herself and stood up, going to the wardrobe and pulled out clothes for herself, clean shirt, fresh suit wrapped in thin plastic from the dry cleaners. Brown, her safe suit, the one she wore for assessment interviews. Pulling on the trousers and jacket made her feel stronger, smarter, armoured. She put on socks and shoes and stopped behind the door, warning herself just to get ready and out, don’t engage, don’t respond.
In the bathroom she found herself listening for him, hypervigilant, like a house sweep. She washed her face and put on some mascara from the shelf behind the sink, tipping her head back, avoiding her own eye by staring at the lashes. The toilet flush sounded unreasonably loud and she stood watching the whirlpool in the bowl. Wherever he was in the house now he could hear her, knew where she was.
There was no radio on as she stepped down to the hall. His computer bag was still there, propped carefully against the wall, his jacket was hung up on the peg by the door. She passed the table and saw his keys in the bowl but he wasn’t in the kitchen eating a neat breakfast or standing at the worktop organising his packed lunch.
Surreptitiously, pretending to look for something in her bag, she ducked back into the hall and glanced into the living room but he wasn’t there either. Frowning, she flicked the kettle on, pulled some bread out of the bread bin and dropped it into the toaster and turned to look around. Brian was in the garden, wearing his dressing gown and propped up in a stained and faded deckchair they’d inherited from his parents. The wood had rotted and she’d wanted to chuck them but he insisted. Next to the deck chair, lying willy nilly in the wet grass, were three empty beer bottles.
She stood, frowning at him. Slowly his hand slipped down to the side, towards the bottles, limp, as if he was unconscious, as if he was dead. Overdose.
Morrow leapt across the kitchen, grabbed the handle for the French door and threw it open, not frightened but glad almost, glad there was an action to be performed. She stepped in front of the deckchair.
Brian was wearing sunglasses and a jumper under his dressing gown. He had walking boots on and a blanket over his knees. The other hand wasn’t limp. The other hand was clutching a mug of cold tea. He looked up at her, over his glasses, tried to smile, but his gaze faltered and fell to her knees, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.
Morrow crouched down next to him, held his forearm, spoke with a professional voice. ‘Brian, have you taken anything?’
Sluggishly he looked down at her fingers on his arm. It was the first time she had touched him in the five months since their son died. She looked up. His eyes were raw and broken but Brian wasn’t sad or coping, wasn’t smug or irritated, all those small nuanced things he always was. This was a Brian she didn’t know, and he was looking at her neutrally, one eyebrow arched, protesting the impertinence of her touch.
Her fingers slowly retracted but their eyes were locked. He opened his mouth and whispered, ‘Can’t do this any more.’
She tried to deflect him. ‘You need to get ready for your work-’
‘Alex,’ he said, his voice quiet and measured, as if he’d been thinking about this one sentence all night, ‘I hate who you make me.’
The fisherman had laid newspaper on the car seat, ripped open a plastic shopping bag to protect it and then sat Aamir in the passenger seat. He was very kind. He turned his good winter coat inside out, because of the mud, and threaded Aamir’s arms in, one at a time, pulled the cord on the waist tight to do it up. He even gave Aamir his socks to put on his numb feet.
Aamir sat in the haze of warmth from the car heater and looked at the socks as his feet thawed. Grey socks, red toes. They were thermal, the man said. Thermal.
He was alone in the car. The man busied himself outside, packing up, folding a chair, pulling his fishing rod into bits and slipping them into socks of their own.
You think about that and I’ll pack up, he had said.
Aamir was to think. His job, set by the man, was to think: where do you want to go?
It was off the motorway, on the edge of a large roundabout and would, she imagined, be a serious draw for people who cared about that sort of thing. In the window the luxury cars were polished to a wink, lined up on the diagonal against the glass wall so that the sun glinted off them, drawing the eye of covetous drivers.