A Lovely Way to Burn

Fifteen

The adrenalin from the fight wore off about a mile down the motorway. Stevie pulled on to the hard shoulder and surrendered herself to the shakes. Every bit of her hurt. She dragged a tartan travelling blanket from the back seat and draped it around her shoulders. There was a packet of paracetamol in her satchel. She dry-swallowed three and then ran trembling fingers over her face. Its contours were swollen and unfamiliar.

The attack had been so sudden and so determined that there had been no time for fear. But the sense of dread that had shadowed her since she had found Simon’s corpse was stronger and Stevie realised that she was scared to look at her face. She took a deep breath, pulled down the sun visor and looked into the small vanity mirror.

She explored her face in portions: eyes, cheeks, mouth, chin. A collage of cuts and contusions. She didn’t want to switch the Mini’s interior light on but Stevie could see enough to know that she looked a mess.

She whispered, ‘Well, kid, if your face is your fortune I think you may have blown it this time.’

There was a bruise on Stevie’s temple where the pot thrown by Rachel had met its mark. Her cheek was scuffed and there was a red bloom of broken veins across her nose. She looked at her hands. Her palms were grazed and stinging from where she had hit the tarmac, her knuckles red and scraped. Stevie cautiously touched her ribs, where Jirí’s boot had made contact. The pain made her gasp but she persisted, pressing into the tenderness, making sure nothing was out of place.

When she was satisfied that nothing was broken she leant forward and ran her hands up each of her legs from ankle to thigh. Her jeans were ripped at the knee and her flesh felt mauve with bruises, but the thick denim had helped to save her legs from more abrasions.

‘You’ll live.’ Stevie gave a harsh laugh. ‘Talking to yourself . . . first sign of madness.’

She slid the laptop from her satchel. It looked undamaged. Stevie considered taking it from its slipcase and switching it on to check but the thought of the screen’s electronic glow, illuminating her face, stopped her. It struck her that if her attacker believed she already knew what was in the laptop, she might no longer have the option of walking away.

Stevie wondered if Simon had realised how dangerous a task he had set her. Had he genuinely thought it a simple courier job, a favour to release him from whatever intrigue he had been embroiled in, or had he been as careless of her safety as those men who secretly concealed drugs, or even bombs, in their girlfriends’ luggage?

‘Fuck, Simon,’ she whispered. ‘For a clever man you were a hell of an idiot.’

Tears clouded her eyes. Stevie swore again and rubbed them away. There was no time for crying. She took a bottle of perfume from her bag, sprayed a little on the palms of her hands and dabbed it on her cheeks and her exposed knees, to disinfect her grazes. It stung, but it was a small sharp pain, a distraction from the rest of her hurt, and she welcomed it.

She wondered if the man who had attacked her was out there in the darkness, watching her now. The TV studio was on an industrial estate, badly served by public transport during the day, not served at all by it at night. He must have driven there. After Jirí had chased him off, her attacker could have made it to his own vehicle, waited for her to drive out of the car park, and then tailed her at a discreet distance. Leaving his headlights off might be risky, but it would guarantee that Stevie wouldn’t spot him in her rear-view mirror.

She checked again that the car doors were locked and then held her hands up in front of her face. Her fingers were still trembling, but not as badly as before and she reckoned she was fit to drive. She would go back to St Thomas’s and check on Joanie before she decided on her next move. She turned the key in the ignition, gunning the engine into life, and glanced again in the rear-view mirror to make sure that the road behind her was empty. Her toe had just touched the accelerator when her mobile buzzed with news of an incoming text. Stevie took her foot from the pedal, pulled on the handbrake and fished her phone from her bag, glad of the distraction. Joanie’s name flashed on the screen.

‘Thank Christ.’

Joanie had recovered enough to send a text. They would convalesce together, Joanie from the sweats and Stevie from her beating. Her friend made a convincing act of being sweetly stupid, but she was the cleverest person Stevie knew. Joanie would tell her what to do about the laptop. The phone lit up and she saw the start of the message scrolling along the top of the screen: Joanie didn’t make it . . . Joanie didn’t make it . . . Joanie didn’t make it . . . Joanie didn’t make it . . .

Stevie felt as if her own heart had stopped. She turned off the engine and pressed the speech bubble that opened her messages.

Joanie didn’t make it.

I thought you should know.

Derek

Stevie put her head in her hands and took a deep breath. There were ashes in her mouth. She wanted to cry but the tears that had threatened only a moment before refused to come. She whispered her friend’s name, ‘Joanie,’ but Joanie was dead and Stevie had never believed in ghosts.

‘Joanie.’

Ancient Egyptians thought that repeating the names of the dead kept them alive, but no matter how many times you said their names, the dead were dead, and there was no bringing them back.

‘Joanie.’

Stevie put her head against the wheel and closed her eyes. She was glad of her bruises, glad of the flesh-and-bone pain. She drew in a deep juddering breath. Light blasted into the car’s interior and Stevie’s eyes jerked open. She turned the key in the ignition, and pressed her foot to the accelerator, racing the car along the hard shoulder. A horn sounded and she saw a lorry speeding past, headlamps ablaze. Stevie braked. She let the lorry’s lights fade into the darkness, and then steered the Mini on to the motorway. It was best to keep moving.

The road before and behind her was dark, but the opposite side of the carriageway glowed with the headlights of cars driving away from the city. Stevie pictured herself sitting at the breakfast bar in Joanie’s sunny kitchen, sipping a glass of the Cava she bought by the crate, telling her friend all that had happened. How Simon had looked, ungainly in death in a way he had never been in life; the spider that had brushed across her face as she had slid the laptop from its hiding place; the sympathy in Dr Ahumibe’s voice as he offered to take care of the package Mr Reah could no longer receive.

Joanie’s first question would have been, ‘Was Dr Ahumibe handsome?’ Stevie smiled a smile that squeezed tears from her eyes. It would have been a ruse to distract her, a prelude to more important, more frightening questions.

‘Does the man who attacked you think you know what Simon was hiding in that computer, and if he does, how much danger does it put you in? Do you still believe that Simon died of natural causes, or do you think he was murdered?’

The questions conjured a memory of Joanie’s laugh. The recollection was so strong that Stevie could almost smell her friend’s perfume.

The Mini slid across the motorway, sickeningly fast, and Stevie suddenly came to. She turned the steering wheel hard left, correcting its course away from the central reservation and the stream of headlights blazing on the other side.

‘Jesus Christ. Fuck!’

An LED sign above the motorway flashed, Tiredness Kills, and was gone. She sped on, laughing at the sign’s perfect timing, though none of it was funny. She knew she should find a service station, pull over and rest, but kept her foot hard on the pedal and let the car eat up the miles.

Stevie knew what Joanie would have told her to do. It was what she should have done when she first opened Simon’s letter. She sailed down a slip road and off the motorway, the edgelands slid away and London started to rise around her. Stevie glimpsed the glow of a twenty-four-hour grocer’s, the shapes of rough sleepers curled in doorways, a young couple wobbling home, arm in arm, dressed in their nightclub finery. Joanie was dead, but the world was still going on.

She slowed to a stop at a red light and punched her destination into the satnav. The road behind her was still empty of cars. Joanie’s death was final, as all deaths were, but the reasons for Simon’s might yet be unravelled. She would try to make sure he received some kind of justice, and find protection for herself in the process.