For The Death Of Me

43

We waited there for thirty-seven minutes. I know this because I must have checked my watch at least thirty-seven times. My patience control was set at one out of ten, but I managed to keep it in check. After half an hour I stepped out of the car, laying my hands on the roof as Prim had specified. The metal was burning hot, but I didn’t care: it gave me something else to think about.

I jumped when my phone rang. I snatched it from my pocket and flipped it open. ‘Yes? I snapped.

‘Hey,’ Susie exclaimed, ‘what’s with you?’

‘Can’t talk now, love,’ I said. ‘We’re almost there. I’ll call you when it’s all sorted.’

It rang again two minutes later, and this time it was Prim, calling from the house. ‘Okay,’ she whispered. ‘Maddy says you can come in, but only you.’

‘Sorry, pal,’ I said to Mike. ‘You’re not invited.’ He wasn’t bothered. He’d started on my book; looking for ideas, I supposed.

I crossed the street quickly and took the steps in front of the house three at a time. Prim opened the door for me. Maddy was in a sitting room to the left of the entrance hall. She bore no resemblance to the assertive, well-groomed woman I’d met on Sentosa Island; even her hair was a mess. A gun lay on a coffee-table, a big Colt automatic, forty-five gauge at least. I’d fired one in a movie, blank rounds. If she’d tried to use it, the recoil would have taken it right out of her hand.

I held up both of mine. ‘Hello,’ I began. ‘I am the Lone Ranger, honest. Tonto’s out in the car.’

After everything that had happened to her, she managed a laugh. A weak one, but I took it as something positive, a sign that she didn’t feel alone any more.

‘What do I do now, Oz?’ she asked.

‘Whatever I say, would be a good place to begin. I think we should all get out of here. This is a dead end, Maddy, we don’t want to be cornered.’

‘Where do we go?’

‘Anywhere out of Princeton. Pack what stuff you have, and let’s move. We can make decisions on the road.’

‘Will I be safer?’

‘Sure. The Triads may be looking for you, but they’re not after me. With me, you’re less visible.’

She agreed, and she didn’t have a lot to pack. We were heading out of Princeton inside ten minutes. She was going to leave a note for her sister but I vetoed that. Just in case the opposition arrived and broke in (classic security: the key had been under a big flowerpot in the back garden) I didn’t want to leave any clue that she’d been there.

I decided against going back to New York. Instead I went back to Highway One and headed south for Trenton, the state capital, less than fifteen miles away. We didn’t shop around for a hotel: I spotted a big Marriott, almost on the Delaware River, which at that point divides New Jersey from Pennsylvania. We headed straight there.

We took three rooms; Madeleine wanted Prim to share with her, but there was no way I was bunking with Dylan. I filled out the registration forms, using phoney names (I registered Maddy as Ms April July and the clerk didn’t bat an eyelid) and hoping that I wasn’t as famous in Trenton as I was in most other places. I paid for two nights up-front, cash.

Once we were settled in, I went out and bought a case of beer from a liquor store I’d seen on the way in. Back in the hotel I called the girls’ room; they’d showered by that time, so I went along. I opened a beer, handed it to Maddy and she guzzled it like she’d been dying of thirst. I gave her another; that went the same way. Half-way through the third, there was a knock at the door, and Prim let Dylan in. He’d brought some Miller’s; great minds and all that stuff.

‘Were you and Tony really married?’ I asked, when everyone was relaxed.

Maddy nodded. ‘We did it in Singapore. They can be a bit old-fashioned about living together over there. Plus, I loved him.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘He was a gangster, Oz,’ she said philosophically. ‘I suppose danger comes with the job. If he’d bothered to tell me. .’

‘What?’

‘I’d probably have stayed with him. As it was, he loved me. He gave up his life trying to protect me.’ She started to sob quietly. ‘If only I wasn’t so pathologically jealous. I had a bad experience with that Australian faggot, Sandy. When Tony started keeping odd hours, I thought the worst. . and the worst happened, although not as I’d imagined.’ She killed her third can. I gave her another. ‘Now,’ she belched quietly as she tore it open, ‘I’m royally fucked. Tony didn’t leave me in any doubt about these people. They will keep coming.’

‘Then we’ll have to stop them,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘And just how are we going to do that?’

‘Good question,’ Dylan chipped in.

‘If you’re writing this book,’ I asked him, ‘what happens?’

‘Fuck knows,’ he said wonderfully tactlessly. ‘Maddy keeps on running or, like I said in jest a while back, lives with me in New York till the heat’s off?’

Madeleine scowled at him: clearly she didn’t fancy that idea.

I leaned back against the headboard of Prim’s bed. She was reclining beside me, wrapped in a hotel dressing-gown. ‘Way I see it,’ I took time to kill some beer of my own, ‘there’s only one thing you can do to break the cycle. You’ve still got these pics, am I right?’ She nodded. ‘Stored on a PDA?’

‘Clever boy.’

‘Then use the power they give you.’

‘What do you mean?’

I laughed at her amazing ability to think in everything but a straight line. ‘Maddy, why do these people want to kill you? What did Tony tell you? The man you saw with him, the man in the photographs: his identity is unknown to anyone outside his organisation. The Singaporean government has been trying to identify him for years, and shut him down, but they can’t because he’s too strong, and too clever. At least he was, until you came stumbling into his life.’

‘So?’

‘So put an end to him. Use the fucking knowledge: give the photographs to the Singapore police.’

She stared at me. So did Dylan: I’d just written a new twist into his book. (By the way, Maddy thought that his name really was Benedict Luker.)

‘It’s that simple?’ she exclaimed.

‘Nothing in life is that simple, but it’s all you can do unless you fancy sharing Benny’s humble loft for the foreseeable future.’

She frowned. ‘But I’m in New Jersey,’ she murmured. ‘I’m not going back to Sing, Oz. I can’t do that.’

I shook my head. ‘You don’t need to,’ I told her. ‘I’ll arrange for Sing to come to you.’