Bleeding Hearts

30

Not only did Spike walk out of that hospital having said nothing about how he came by his injuries, not only did he find that his bills had been taken care of, but he tracked down the authority holding on to the Trans-Am and managed to wheedle it out of them. He sent me a photo by the usual route. It showed Jazz and him leaning against the car. Scrawled over the photo were the words A little piece of heaven.

Me, I claimed I was a tourist attacked by assailants who were after my traveller’s cheques. Nobody really cared, they were too busy keeping an eye on the affair out on the Olympic Peninsula. Everyone had a theory. They were all far-fetched and they were all more feasible than the truth. Well, all except the one published in the Weekly World News.

A package arrived one day at Sam Clancy’s hospital bed. It contained his walkman with a tape already inserted and ready to play. I didn’t know what Sam would do with Jeremiah Provost’s confession. It wasn’t really my concern, not any more.

As soon as we could, Bel and I got out of the USA. Back in London, we spent a night in a hotel, then she headed back to Yorkshire. She had a lot of stuff to clear up. She wondered if I knew anyone who’d buy half a ton of unwanted weaponry.

Oh, I could think of a few people.

It was a drizzly London morning when I turned up at the offices of Crispin, Darnforth, Jessup. I shook rain out of my hair as I walked up the stairs. I knocked on the door before entering, and smiled as I approached the secretary’s desk.

‘Mr Johns, please.’ She frowned and removed her spectacles.

‘Is he expecting you?’

‘I’m not sure.’ She waited for me to say more, but I just stood there smiling and dripping water on to the pastel pink carpet.

‘I’m afraid he can’t see anyone without an appointment. He’s very busy today.’

‘He’ll see me.’ I could see my smile was beginning to irritate her. She stuck her glasses back on, pushing them up her nose.

‘What name shall I give?’

‘None.’

She picked up her phone and punched a number. ‘Mr Johns, there’s a Mr Nunn here. No, he’s being very mysterious.’ She looked at me. ‘Well, he doesn’t look like he’s selling anything.’ I shook my head in confirmation. ‘Yes, sir.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘If you’d like to make an appointment...’

I snatched the receiver from her and spoke into it.

‘You know who I am. I came here before as a policeman.’

Then I slammed the receiver back into its cradle and waited, while the secretary gave me a look like I’d just tried to jump her. Johns opened the door of his office and stood there.

‘Ah yes,’ he said, ‘do come in, won’t you?’

I walked into his office and looked around. There was nobody else in there. It was just going to be the two of us.

‘Take a seat, please,’ he said. Then he sat down across the desk from me and put his hands together, as if in prayer. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I remember you. As you say, you came here as a policeman. That, I take it, means you’re not a policeman now.’

‘I wasn’t one then either.’ It took me a little while to sit down. The bandages and plasters were tight across my body. Beneath them, the healing wounds were itching like hell.

Johns was nodding, as though I’d merely confirmed something. I wanted to damage his shiny face, the wealthy confidence in his eyes. He wasn’t afraid of me. He’d seen worse than me before, if only in his dreams.

‘I’m afraid I’m a bit in the dark,’ he said.

‘That makes two of us. Tell me about Mrs Ricks’s death.’

‘What? Again?’

‘No, this time I want the truth. You weren’t surprised she died, were you?’

‘No.’

‘Why was that?’

He pouted, his lips touching the tips of his fingers. Then he sat back in his chair, touching its sides with his arms. ‘You killed her?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ I didn’t mind him knowing, not now. If he was going to be honest with me, he’d expect me to be honest too. In fact, he’d demand it.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘In that case, I’ve something for you.’ He stood up and went to his safe. It was a free-standing model, dark green with a brass maker’s plate, like you see the bank robbers dynamite in old cowboy films. He unlocked it with a key and turned the handle. When he looked round at me, I was pointing a pistol straight at him. It didn’t faze him, though last night it had fazed Scotty Shattuck when I’d relieved him of it.

‘There’s no need for that,’ Johns said quietly. He opened the safe wide so I could see inside it. It was packed full of papers and large manila envelopes. He lifted the top envelope out and handed it to me. It didn’t have a name or anything on it, and felt flimsy in my hand. I gestured for him to return to his chair, then sat myself down. I put the gun on the desktop and tore open the envelope. There were two typed sheets inside, written as a letter. The signature at the bottom read Eleanor Ricks.

I started to read.

I paused and looked up at Geoffrey Johns. He was staring out of the window. Oh, I’d spoken with Scotty. I’d done a lot more than that, too. But he was alive, and it’s amazing what they can do in hospitals these days, isn’t it? I started reading again.

There was a signature, nothing more.

I looked up at the solicitor.

‘She left two envelopes,’ he confirmed. ‘The first one was to be opened the day she... died. I opened it at the time stated, and it said to call the police anonymously and tell them a murder was taking place outside the Craigmead Hotel. I’d to put the other envelope in the safe until someone came for it.’ There were tears in Johns’s eyes. ‘I phoned the police, but then I phoned the Craigmead and had Eleanor paged. They paged her, but she never came to the desk. She just walked outside, ignoring the call, and was shot.’

‘She set the whole thing up herself,’ I said. I’d known as much since last night, when Shattuck had admitted it. He’d known who was hiring me, but not that she was her own target. When he heard the news, he fled. Up until last night, he’d thought I killed the wrong person. But I’d put him right on that.

Who’d known what Eleanor Ricks would wear that day?

No one but herself.

Geoffrey Johns was blowing his nose. Then he got up and walked over to a cupboard, where he found a bottle of whisky and two glasses. He stood with his back to me, pouring.

‘She said I’d know you when you came... I’d know to give you the envelope. Tell me, please, why did she do it?’

By the time he turned round again, I’d already left the room. I took her confession with me. I didn’t owe Johns anything. The only debts I owed were to the dead.

31

The village was one of those Hollywood-style affairs, by which I mean it was so quintessentially English that you suspected it had to be fake.

Certainly the people seemed fake, like actors playing their given roles, be it bumpkin or squire or commuter. Everyone in the hotel bar was called George or Gerry or Arthur, a few of them wore cravats, and they drank from pewter tankards. The bar had wooden beams painted black. They looked like plastic, but weren’t.

Bel loved it. Our room was all Laura Ashley, picked from a brochure or magazine feature and copied exactly. The bed was a new brass four-poster with a flower-print canopy. The walls boasted hand-painted wallpaper, so the manageress told us. It’s just as well she mentioned it, for you’d never have guessed otherwise. It looked like wallpaper, and very plain wallpaper at that. It wasn’t even signed.

I had to smile when the first thing Bel did in the room was switch on the TV. She lay on the bed with the remote, picking complimentary grapes out of a bowl and popping them into her mouth.

‘Look at that,’ she said.

She’d found the CNN news. Two East European nation-states were on a war footing.

‘Looks like my phone call didn’t do much good,’ I said.

I was on my best behaviour throughout. I didn’t complain. I was compliant, agreeing with everything Bel said. I’ve said before, I’m very good at looking like I fit in, like I’m normal, just like you are, standing at your bar with your tankard, or walking your dog around the golf course, or choosing yourself a new sweater or shirt. I can do all those things and show nothing but contentment.

It’s an act, that’s all.

Hoffer’s a good actor too. He believes his role. He’s all method. I get the feeling we’ll meet up again, whether we like it or not. We’re not two sides of the same coin; we’re the same side of the same coin.

Not that Bel suspects any of this. She thinks it’s all over. She thinks we came here for a lovers’ weekend, a break from the past. From this day on, we’d be starting anew, putting the horror behind us. At lunch and dinner, I held her hand across the table and exerted the gentlest pressure. The light in her eyes was pure and radiant, almost unbearable in intensity. I kept swallowing back words, images, sentiments. I kept true to myself in the realm of thought.

We walked around the village. There wasn’t much to it. Narrow streets, sloping up from the main thoroughfare on both sides. A train station, shops, five pubs, the one hotel, a churchyard with rose bushes all around it. Nobody poor seemed to live here. Bel didn’t know that when I stopped to admire a particular house, I had an ulterior motive.

It was a large detached property with a low front wall and a well-tended garden. There was a gravel driveway, and a Volvo estate parked by the front entrance.

Bel squeezed my arm. ‘Is this the sort of place you want to live?’

I thought about it. I wanted a penthouse in Manhattan, so I could look down on an entire city, like holding it in my open hand.

‘Maybe,’ I said.

There was a nameplate by the garden gate, but I deflected Bel’s attention by pointing to some trees across the road. Maybe she wouldn’t have noticed the name anyway, not that Ricks is such a common name.

They were Eleanor Ricks’s parents.

This was where she’d been born. Just over forty years ago. I’d read that much in the papers. Her parents had been eloquent after her murder. They weren’t in favour of the death penalty, even for terrorists. That was big of them.

Bel and I made love that night under our canopy. The room was costing £85 a day, including Full English Breakfast. My reserves were pretty low. Soon, I’d have to raid my Swiss account. Bel had posed the question of jobs. She thought she could get work as a secretary or something. And maybe I could... well, there’d be something I could do.

Sell burgers maybe, or stack supermarket shelves, like Hoffer had suggested.

We made love, as I say, and she went to sleep. I got dressed again and went down the stairs. The bar was still busy with Saturday night spenders, but nobody saw me as I passed into the night.

I walked through the village. Even at night it was picturesque, all hanging baskets and tile roofs, distant hills and low stone walls.

The walls around the cemetery were high though. The Real England had no place for death. Even so, I was coming here to pay my respects. The gate was unlocked, so I pushed it open. The wrought iron swung open in silence.

It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. There were still fresh flowers on Eleanor Ricks’s grave. I stood there for a while, shuffling my feet, hands deep in my pockets. I wasn’t really thinking anything. After about five minutes, I left the cemetery again.

Her parents’ place was just up the hill.