Road Kill

Eleven

“Of course not,” I said, determinedly bright. “Come on in, Sam. Can I get you some coffee?”

Sam gave Sean another anxious skim, wavered and almost fled. But he’d come for a purpose and that was enough to make him stand his ground, however hesitantly. He sidled further into the room. “Well, I know it’s late and I don’t want to put you out or—”

“Just sit down and have a bloody drink,” Sean said tiredly.

Sam’s knees gave way at the deadly quiet in his voice. It was lucky there was an armchair behind him at the time.

“Oh, erm, yeah, OK,” he said, with a fearful little smile. His eyes were big and brown and pleading above his beard. “Thanks.”

“Good. I’ll make a fresh pot,” I said. I headed for the door, pausing only to throw Sean a warning glance. “Don’t bully him while I’m gone.”

That almost raised a smile. “I’ll try not to.”

In fact, when I got back I found Sean had shaken off his black mood and somehow drawn Sam far enough out of his shell to recount the tale of my spectacular reappearance at Gleet’s place. I think I preferred it when Sam was terrified and silent.

“So she comes screaming into the yard with this guy right on her tail,” he was saying, drawing air diagrams with those long skinny hands of his. “Charlie, she doesn’t turn a hair. She just heads for this dry stone wall and bails out at the last minute and bang! The guy slams the wall and down it all goes, with her still on top. House of cards. Didn’t she tell you?”

I put the tray I was carrying down onto the table with more of a clatter than I’d been intending.

“No,” Sean said softly, his eyes on my face as I handed him his coffee. “Funnily enough, she didn’t quite get round to mentioning that part.”

I looked away. “What happened after I got chucked out the first time, anyway?”

“Well, there were some nasty rumours floating around about Tess,” Sam said, nodding his thanks as he took a swig of his brew. He sat hunched forwards with his hands wrapped round his mug like the effort of recall made him cold. “There were a few people there who reckoned she wasn’t quite as sorry to see the back of Slick as she made out. They reckon she and Gleet have had a bit of a thing going, on the quiet.”

“Tess and Gleet?” I repeated, almost to myself. I remembered the way Gleet had behaved around Tess at the wake and realised that the suggestion didn’t surprise me. In fact, it didn’t surprise me at all.

“Well that would be a reason, I suppose,” Sean said, as though he’d read my mind.

Sam looked from one of us to the other. “A reason for what?”

I reached for the piece of broken fairing and handed it over. Sam put his mug down on the table and turned the brightly-coloured plastic over in his hands, frowning.

“This is from Slick’s bike, isn’t it?” he said at last. “Where did you get it?”

“Gleet’s workshop. Hidden away just about underneath that damned great dog of his.”

Sam snorted into his coffee. “So you’ve met the infamous Queenie and lived to tell the tale.” he said. “Puts you in the minority, by all accounts.”

“Yeah,” Sean said, wry. “Between that dog and his sister, sounds like Gleet is surrounded by tough bitches.”

That gained him a grin from Sam that came close to being relaxed, friendly. Sam held up the bit of fairing, twirled it in his nimble fingers. “So what does this mean, exactly?”

“Slick’s bike has gone AWOL,” Sean told him. “The police were supposed to pick it up from some garage near the crash site this morning but it had already been lifted.” He nodded to the fairing. “This would seem to indicate that Gleet might have it. What we’ve been trying to work out is why.”

“Supposing the rumours are right and he did have his eye on Tess,” I put in. “What better way for him to get rid of the competition than a nice convenient road accident? Everybody knew Slick rode like he’d left his brains in a box under the bed. Right on the edge. Gleet could have sabotaged the bike easily enough – hell, he built it. It wouldn’t have taken much.”

“So now he’s nicked it back to stop the police finding whatever it is he’d done,” Sam murmured. “Bit risky, isn’t it? What if Slick had spotted it? And what if the cops had carted the wreckage straight to their own impound yard?”

“On a Sunday?” I shook my head. “It would have been a good guess that they wouldn’t come for it until today.”

“OK,” Sean said slowly. “Let’s run with that for a moment. If Gleet fixed Slick’s bike in some way, why was Clare so convinced that someone in a Transit van had run them off the road?”

I shrugged. “Like you said, she might not have been thinking clearly when she said it. Christ, she was in tremendous pain, doped up to the eyeballs—”

“That wasn’t your gut feeling at the time, Charlie,” he cut in. “She told you the van had come after them and you believed her. You’ve got good instincts – trust them.”

“Yeah, but she also told me the reason she was out with Slick in the first place was because the Ducati wouldn’t start,” I said with just a touch of bitterness, “and I believed her about that, too.”

I had a sudden painful recall of my conversation with Tess just before I’d left Gleet’s. It would seem there were a lot of things Clare wasn’t telling me the whole story on. Even so, something stopped me from speaking out about her possible relationship with Jamie. I couldn’t do it in front of Sam.

“Hang on,” Sam said now, sounding puzzled, “if you’re saying Slick’s accident might have been down to Gleet, then who was after you tonight?”

“Good question.” Sean’s face was grim. “Here’s another one for you, Charlie – will they try again?”

Our eyes clashed and locked. “I’ll be more careful.”

“And just how do you intend to do that on a bike?”

Sam cleared his throat nervously. “Erm, maybe someone’s just trying to scare you off, you know?” he suggested, ducking his head. “I mean, maybe not you personally, but there’ve been a lot of complaints about the road racing up and down that valley every weekend. Could be that someone’s decided to take the law into their own hands, so to speak.”

“So why go after a bike on the Wray road, on a Monday?” I said, still looking at Sean.

Sam shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, Slick’s wake wasn’t any secret,” he said. “It would have been obvious that there were going to be loads of bikers up at Gleet’s farm. Maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I shook my head, still doubtful. “I didn’t get the impression that it was a random thing,” I said. “Whoever the guy driving that van was, he was waiting for me.”

“Or somebody like you – small bike, on their own, going dark, just starting to rain,” Sam said, ticking off the points on his fingers. “You were a perfect target.”

“Was Slick a perfect target, too?” I wondered. “Big bike, two-up, on a dry road in broad daylight.”

“We don’t know that it was the same van,” Sean said. “I don’t suppose you got the number, by any chance?”

I shut my eyes for a moment and a vision of the Transit sprang into my head, towering over me where I’d fallen in the yard. I remembered the black bull bars on the front end, the oval Ford badge on the bonnet, the blaze of the headlights. I saw again the way the van had slewed wildly out of the gateway, the rear door with the disintegrating window. But no registration number. Nothing. I opened my eyes again. “He must have taken the plates off.”

“Serious boy,” Sean said.

“I, erm, don’t suppose this might have anything to do with, erm, your work?” Sam asked.

“I’m not working at the moment,” I said automatically, then paused.

Clare had wanted to hire me as Jamie’s bodyguard and I’d agreed to do it. At the time I’d thought it was misplaced maternal instinct that had motivated her. Now I wasn’t so sure.

But even so, wanting me to stop the kid from riding himself into the ground – or the nearest telegraph pole – on this trip to Ireland was hardly the same as protecting him from a determined outside threat. And besides, there was no reason to assume the mysterious van driver had been after anybody but me. Unless he was following the basic rule of assault on a principal: first kill the bodyguard.

I looked up and saw from Sean’s face that he was thinking about Clare’s urgent request, too. I saw his eyebrow lift when I shook my head a fraction. I’ll tell you later.

“What do you know about this trip to Ireland?” I asked.

Sam gave a short bark of laughter as he reached for his mug again. “The Devil’s Bridge Club outing?” he said. “Biggest bunch of loonies going. Half of that lot will come back in body bags, the way they ride.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he realised what he’d said and shut up abruptly, taking a guilty gulp of coffee.

“I take it from that, you’re not a member,” Sean said.

Sam shook his head. “Oh no,” he said. “On my old Norton? They wouldn’t have me – even if I was quick enough.” His lips twisted in self-derision and he waved a hand at his battered black leather jacket and oil-stained jeans. “I’m nowhere near trendy enough for that lot.”

I digested the information for a moment. Questionable style and elderly Brit bike notwithstanding, Sam was a rapid and tenacious rider. I’d chased him through the Trough of Bowland’s narrow switchback country lanes often enough to know that for a fact.

“So who is a member?”

“Well Slick was, for a start. And your mates William and Paxo.”

“And the guy they were with tonight – Daz?”

“With the Aprilia?” Sam said, nodding. “Oh yeah.”

“And Gleet?”

Sam looked surprised. “No,” he said slowly. “In fact, I would have said Gleet was dead against ‘em. He was Slick’s mate, of course, but until tonight I’ve never seen him have anything to do with the rest of them. Funny, that.”

“Well it would seem they’ve buried the hatchet,” Sean said with a glance at me, “if what you’ve told me about tonight is anything to go by. Maybe they’ve relented about letting Tess go with them.”

“Mm,” I said. “What about Jamie? That bike of his is only a four hundred. Would they let him join?”

“Who? Oh, the kid at the wake?” Sam asked. He frowned and tugged at his lower lip. “I don’t think I’ve seen him before, but he did say Slick had given him a chance to prove himself, didn’t he? Maybe that’s what he meant.”

“Jamie’s from Ireland,” I murmured. “I wonder if that has anything to do with it.”

“Might do,” Sean considered. “Why are they going over there, anyway? What can they do there that they can’t do here?”

“Drink better Guinness?” I suggested.

“Only in the south,” he said with a smile. “The Guinness in Dublin is the best you’ll get anywhere.” He glanced at Sam. “Do you know where they’re going?”

Sam shook his head. “Search me. Why are you so interested?” he said, smiling a little weakly. “Not thinking of joining ‘em are you, Charlie?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”

He nearly choked on the last of his drink. “Hell fire!” he yelped when he could speak again. “Have you lost your mind? Why the hell would you want to do something as stupid as that?”

It wasn’t Sam’s outburst that worried me. It was the fact that Sean had gone very quiet and very still. I risked a quick glance in his direction but his face was a veneer of polite indifference. A muscle jumped, just once, at the side of his jaw, the only outward sign of tension. Ah well, I’d deal with that later.

I turned back to Sam. He took in my measured stare and coloured up, dropping his gaze. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s OK Sam, I know it looks crazy but I made a promise,” I said gently, talking as much to Sean as to him, thinking of Clare’s desperation that I should protect Jacob’s son. “I’m doing this for Clare and Jacob, and . . . what?”

Sam’s flinch had been unmistakable. “For Jacob?” he repeated.

“Yes,” I said. “After all—”

“What else is there, Sam?” Sean cut in, his voice soft but dangerous. “What have you been leaving out?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He opened his mouth to protest that Sean must be mistaken, but then he took one look at the other man’s sudden alertness and clearly changed his mind.

“It was just something Tess said – after you’d left the first time,” he muttered, strangely reluctant to maintain eye contact with either of us. “Look, Charlie, they’d turned the music up by this time and I couldn’t get that close and I might not have—”

“Just spit it out,” Sean said quietly.

“All right, all right,” Sam said, miserable. “Someone asked why didn’t they just postpone this Irish trip. You know, leave it a bit, what with Slick . . . well, y’know. But Tess said they had to go. She was really insistent about it. She said it was too late to back out now, that the stuff was waiting for them.”

“‘Stuff’?” I queried sharply. “What stuff?”

Sean laughed without amusement. “From Ireland?” he said. “It could be anything. Quite apart from any terrorist connotations, there’s been a hell of a lot of counterfeit currency being filtered into the UK from over there in the last few years. Or drugs.” He glanced at Sam and his eyes narrowed. “But that’s not all, is it?”

Sam was looking thoroughly wretched. “She also said—” he hesitated again, “—she said they’d got Jacob on board.”

“Jacob?” I repeated blankly. “Are you sure?”

Sam squirmed again. “I’m sorry, Charlie, but she definitely mentioned him. By name.”

“Jacob’s in Ireland now,” I said, almost to myself. Possibly with ten grand in cash on him. For what?

“But he’s on his way home,” Sean said grimly and, as if he’d heard my unvoiced question, he added, “So you can ask him yourself.”

I straightened. “You’ve heard from him,” I said, unable to suppress an accusing note. “When?”

“He called while you were out. I was going to tell you as soon as you got back but we were, ah, distracted.”

I hoped the lights weren’t up high enough for Sam to spot the way my colour rose but I wouldn’t have liked to bet on it.

“What did he say?” I rushed on. “Did you tell him anything about the accident? What—”

“Whoa.” Sean held up his hands. “I told him no more than he needed to know, Charlie,” he said. “Jacob’s down in County Cork. He was going to head straight up to Dublin and pick up the first available ferry service to Holyhead. He’ll be home sometime tomorrow.” He drained his coffee cup and regarded me with that unnerving calm of his. “There’ll be plenty of time to talk to him about what both he and Clare might – or might not – have been up to with Slick when he gets back.”

***

Sam left soon after that, slinking out like a dinner party guest who suddenly finds his hosts having a domestic over the soufflé. Not that Sean and I got to blows over the fact he hadn’t told me about Jacob’s call. I was just upset by the way he ducked out of answering any questions about it.

It wasn’t until we were alone that I found out the reason he was being so evasive.

“Your friend Jacob is not exactly squeaky clean when it comes to the law,” he said, folding his arms and leaning his shoulder against the kitchen doorway. “Did you know he’s got form for handling stolen goods?”

I was feeding the dogs and froze right in the middle of putting their bowls down onto the flagged floor. It was as much at the emphasis on your friend as on anything else.

“No,” I admitted. I straightened and stuffed my hands in my pockets, feeling my chin come up almost of its own accord. “How did you find that one out?”

He shrugged. “Madeleine,” was all he said.

“Sometimes,” I muttered, “that girl doesn’t know when to stop digging.”

“Better to know what we’re dealing with,” he said, his tone cool now. “You told me yourself you don’t think Clare’s being entirely truthful with you. Maybe that’s why.”

“Ah,” I said, aware of a sickly taste in my mouth, “I heard something tonight that puts a bit of a different spin on things. According to Tess, Jamie told her the reason Slick was giving Clare a lift up to Devil’s Bridge on Sunday was to meet him. She reckoned Clare and Jamie were . . . involved.”

“Ah,” Sean said, unconsciously echoing me. “That does alter things somewhat, doesn’t it? And you believe her?”

“I don’t know,” I said unhappily. “I don’t want to, but that’s not the same thing. It does make a twisted kind of sense. I mean, it would explain a lot of things.”

“It would explain why Clare’s been so cute with you, but it doesn’t explain why Jacob would want to get himself involved with something dodgy going on in Ireland.”

“We don’t know that he’s involved with anything,” I said quickly.

“When Slick’s bike disappeared, where was the first place MacMillan’s lot came looking? Here. Why do you think that was, hmm?” Sean fired back at me. “And he has Irish connections – not least of which is his ex-wife.”

“They’re not divorced,” I corrected automatically.

“Estranged then,” Sean dismissed. “Whatever. We don’t know what she was after here today, unless it was the ten grand, but if that was what they were after and they found it, why try and throw you out? Why not just leave peaceably, if they’d got what they came for?”

I thought about that one for a few moments, leaning my hip against the sink. The only sound in the kitchen was the scrape of the metal bowls being pursued across the floor as the dogs stuffed themselves.

“Do you think she knows about Jamie and Clare?” I asked then. “Could she have demanded money to keep quiet about it? What if that’s why Clare had the money in the safe, ready to pay her off? Then she has her accident with Slick and Isobel goes looking for the money because she knows it’s there.”

Sean shook his head. “You’re clutching at straws, Charlie,” he said. “It doesn’t answer who knocked them off – or came after you for that matter. And anyway, if Clare was in that kind of trouble, don’t you think she would have told you the truth?”

I thought of Jacob, who was just as much my friend as Clare was. “I don’t know.”

I wanted to cast Jacob’s former wife into the role of villain, I realised. With a boyfriend like Eamonn in tow, it wasn’t difficult.

“Did Madeleine manage to dig up anything on Eamonn?”

Mention of his name did something dark to Sean’s face, as though he was recalling the encounter with the Irishman and regretting something.

“She’s on with it at the moment,” he said. He gave me a weary smile. “The Merc was registered to Isobel, so all we’ve got to go on is Eamonn’s first name. Even for Madeleine that’s a tall order.”

“When were you going to tell me about this?” I asked quietly.

“I wasn’t,” he said, making no bones about it, “right up until Pickering mentioned that bit about the stuff waiting in Ireland and Jacob being in on it.”

“Just how long ago was Jacob done for receiving?” My own defensiveness made me snappy. “Only, in all the time I’ve known them the only illegal thing they’ve done is broken the speed limit. Oh – and given you shelter when MacMillan was after you for murder.”

Sean ducked his head in wry acknowledgement. “The conviction was a while ago,” he allowed. “Eight years, I think. Nearly nine.”

“Before my time.” Before Clare’s time, too. I remembered Jamie’s comment about helping Jacob dig the driveway sensor in. How old did he say he’d been at the time? Ten. He was barely twenty now. “I think he and Isobel were still together back then,” I said.

“So he could have learned to hide it better. Or he’s been keeping his nose clean and something’s come up that’s got him involved again.”

“Like what?”

Sean shrugged again. “You tell me?” he said. “His girlfriend’s just been knocked off another man’s bike and damned near killed; his ex- – sorry – estranged wife has turned up out of the blue, running around with a psycho who likes to burgle his house when he’s not there and beat up his friends; and his son’s part of an illegal road racing gang who may be about to be prosecuted for their part in Slick’s death. Oh and, to cap it all, his boy might just be knocking off his girlfriend. Face it, Charlie, Jacob Nash is in the shit – we’re just trying to work out how deep.”

I sighed and rubbed a hand across my eyes, defeated. “OK,” I said. “I give in. You’re right. The thing is, what the hell is he mixed up in, and how do we get him out of it?”

“He may not want to be got out of it, have you thought of that?”

I didn’t answer that one right away, just met his gaze and held it. What are you saying, Sean – that not everybody wants to be saved?

“I know,” I said, “but I have to try.”

***

It wasn’t long before I dragged myself up to bed, hoping to catch up on some of the sleep I’d missed the night before, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, I lay awake for a long time after I’d turned out the light. Maybe I should start drinking decaf, but that wasn’t the only thing that kept me from sleeping.

Even after I’d talked it through with Sean, I still had no idea what Jacob and Clare might be caught up in. Again I berated myself for not seeing more of them lately. If there’d been something troubling either of them I should have been there to see it. Been there to offer my help.

Somewhere below me I could just hear Sean making phone calls in the study and I was washed with guilt that I’d dragged him away from his work.

And for what? He’d come because he’d heard the pain in my voice. He’d dropped everything and driven three hundred miles for no other reason than because I needed him. If there was one thing I didn’t doubt, it was the strength of his feelings for me.

Then I remembered again the way he’d calmly prepared to dispatch Eamonn, like he was a rogue animal who simply needed putting down. It wasn’t just the deadly skill he possessed, it was his apparent willingness to use it.

Not in a foreign country, hunted and on the run, in a desperate situation of kill or be killed. But in the middle of the English countryside, on a man who’d already been disarmed and who posed no immediate threat. The memory sent a cold fear clutching at my stomach, made me roll away and bury my face in the pillow.

Sean had been trained as a killer by the army, no two ways about it. That he’d found a legal use for that training and that instinct in civilian life was to his credit. But he’d been pushed to his very limit and beyond. What had he lost along the way?

I’d been frightened for Sean before. Of the danger he found himself in, of what it might do to him. But I’d never been personally frightened of him. My reaction tonight had shaken me more than I liked to admit. As if, by giving in to it, I was admitting he was out of control and dangerous. Even to me.

Perhaps especially to me.

I tossed and turned for over an hour. Eventually, I caught his soft footfall on the stairs. He didn’t know the house well, but he still intuitively managed to avoid the creaky boards. He moved along the corridor and paused, seemingly right outside my unlocked bedroom door.

I held my breath, not that it would make any difference. He’d be able to hear my heart hammering against my ribs anyway.

There was the slightest rattle of the old brass door handle being turned, the movement of hinges. I raised my head and peered into the gloom, but my own door had remained firmly shut. I heard the slight click of another door closing. The one across the corridor. The spare room Jamie had used last night.

I dropped my head back onto the pillow not sure if it was relief or disappointment that flooded through me.