Road Kill

Nineteen

Between us, we managed to get Tess on her feet long enough to get her back to the hotel. We staggered in through Reception with her draped between us, still wailing – drunk, scared, and hurt, in equal measure.

In the light she looked terrible. Grass-stained and dishevelled. Somewhere along the way she’d lost a shoe and her shaken lack of co-ordination only accentuated the unevenness of her gait. The grass verge had been stonier than I’d realised when I’d chucked her across it and she now had a long diagonal graze across one knee and scrapes to both palms. Still, it had been a better option than the alternative.

A stick-thin middle-aged woman was working the late stint on the front desk. She took in the state of Tess and skewered the four lads with a long and suspicious glare. I think if I hadn’t been with them she might have seriously considered the possibility that they’d roughed the girl up themselves. She certainly didn’t seem too convinced about their furtive story of a rogue drunk driver, despite the fact that it was close to the truth.

“I’ve got a first-aid kit in my tank bag,” I said. “Come up to my room, Tess, and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

She took little coaxing, nodding tearfully with her lips pressed tight together like a child promised a lollipop in return for being a big brave girl. She leaned on a table long enough to toe off her other shoe, abandoning it where it landed, and trailed after me.

As we reached the bottom tread of the staircase I paused and looked back, letting her go on ahead. The four of them were still standing in the reception area, stiff shouldered with delayed shock.

“Another close one, Daz?” I murmured.

For a moment his eyes met mine, haunted, then he flicked them away and his expression shifted into devil-may-care so comprehensively that I could almost have imagined the other.

“Bar’s still open,” he said, defiant. “Anyone fancy another beer?”

***

“I never wanted to be here, y’know.”

I glanced up in surprise at Tess’s sudden statement as I dumped another piece of TCP-sodden cotton wool into the rubbish bin. She was perched on the edge of the second bed in my room, having sat down with experimental heaviness and bounced up and down a few times, like she was thinking of staying and was just trying out the mattress.

For a moment I didn’t reply. All I could think of was how hard she’d fought for the right to come along. Then I backtracked and realised Tess herself had never made that much of a fuss about it. With Gleet banging the drum on her behalf, she hadn’t had to.

I also remembered how she’d told me, with apparent sincerity, that Clare had been unfaithful to Jacob with his own son. Not relevant as such, but pretty good as an indication of her inability to separate fact from fiction.

“Why’s that, Tess?” I said, dropping my eyes to her knee again. I’d just about got all the grit out of it but she was going to have to stay out of short skirts for a while.

She snorted hard enough to make the bed sway and waved a hand towards herself.

“Well, look at the state of me,” was all she said.

“So, what are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice casual. I caught one of her hands, turned it palm upwards and started wiping dirt from the scuffed skin.

“Tickles,” she said, giggling, trying to pull it away.

“Sorry, but I really need to clean this up,” I said, not letting go, the way you’d hold onto the ear of a fractious child.

I was using a stronger solution of disinfectant than was strictly kind and it should have been stinging like hell but the alcohol was proving an effective painkiller. For the moment. Her hand had started to swell a little, too. “You’re going to have to take your rings off, Tess.”

She shook her head several times more than was necessary, then had to grab on to the bed while the room caught up with her. “Oh no,” she said, “they never come off, this lot.”

She held both hands up, backs towards me, to show off the rake of silver bands, adorned with glittering glass. “Made ‘em all myself. Cool, huh?” She wiggled her fingers and frowned, as though she couldn’t work out why she was having trouble flexing them.

“Your fingers have already started to come up like sausages,” I said bluntly. “If you leave it until tomorrow you’ll have to get them cut off.”

She pulled a shocked face and shivered with the giggles again.

I sighed. “I meant the rings, Tess, not your fingers.”

“Sorry,” she said, grinning inanely and making an effort to pull herself together that was only partially successful.

But she did begin tugging at her fingers, dropping the jewellery into a pile on her lap, a purpose for which her mini skirt was not best suited. One ring slipped between her thighs onto the carpet and, when she leaned over to retrieve it, two or three others dropped, too.

Tess swore. I reached for one of the saucers from the tea-making kit, scooping the fallen rings into it and handing it to her, otherwise we were going to be here all night. She managed to peel the rest off with studied concentration and added them to the collection.

“So, if you didn’t want to come to Ireland,” I said, picking up the thread again along with the cotton wool, “why was Gleet giving Daz such a hard time about them not letting you in on it?”

“Just ‘cos I wanted in didn’t mean I wanted in, in,” she mumbled, sniggering again. Then she sobered, turning almost maudlin. “Aw, but Gleet’s been lovely to us – me an’ Ashley – a proper mate.”

“Really?” I said, getting irritated with her now and trying not to show it. “So what’s he doing with Slick’s bike, then?”

For a moment Tess sat and stared at me, open mouthed, and I could see the alarm flitting about behind her eyes. God knows, there was plenty of room for manoeuvre in there.

There may have been surprise but it was not, I realised suddenly, because of anything Gleet might have done. It was because I knew about it.

“What you talking about?” she demanded, much too late.

“Come on, Tess. Slick’s bike went missing after the accident and I know full well that Gleet’s got it,” I said, only stretching the truth a little. “Now why is that, hmm? What doesn’t he want the police to find?”

“Nothing!” she said, her voice starting to rise. “They aren’t going to find nothing.” And, as it sank in that a denial was as good as a confirmation, she added sulkily: “There isn’t nothing for them to find.”

And taken purely from a grammatical point of view, she was probably telling the truth. I squirted Savlon onto her hands and sat back on my heels, letting her rub the cream into them. She did so distractedly, in a nervous wringing gesture.

“If it wasn’t Gleet,” I asked quietly, “who did knock Slick off his bike?”

She looked up at me, bleary, pink around the nose like she was about to cry. “Who says they were after my Slick?”

“Don’t keep trying to walk me down that path, Tess,” I said softly, a warning. “There was nothing going on between Jamie and Clare, and you know it.”

She flushed. “He told me he was bringing her to see him,” she muttered.

“Who did?”

“Jamie. He told me Slick was bringing Clare to see him last Sunday. Didn’t want his old man to find out about it. Dirty little sod.”

Realisation dawned. Not knowing about the money Jamie was borrowing from Clare, Tess had put her own perverted spin on the facts. Well, that figured.

“If Jacob obviously didn’t know what was going on, why did you tell people he was involved?”

“I never!”

“Yes you did,” I said firmly. “At the wake.”

“I never!” she protested again, indignant. “Who told you that?”

“Someone I trust,” I said, crushing her. “You said he was ‘on board’. On board with what?”

She frowned, screwing her eyes up with the effort of recall. “Jacob, Jacob,” she murmured, as though that was going to help. “Wait a minute . . . Jamie,” she said. “Gnasher. I said Gnasher was on board. Jamie, not Jacob.”

“Gnasher?” I repeated. Where had I heard him called that before? Gleet. That was it, outside the hospital. I tried to work out if that’s what Sam could have overheard at the wake or if Tess was spinning me yet another line. He certainly didn’t seem to know Jamie – not well enough to realise the relationship between him and Jacob. I wonder . . .

“Yeah,” Tess said, happier now she could stop the thinking that was making her vodka-addled brain hurt. “I told Slick he was a bad idea, though, that kid. Hadn’t got the cash for it until a few weeks ago. Don’t know where he got it. Don’t want to know, either.”

“A few weeks ago?” I said sharply, thinking of the withdrawal slip Sean and I had found in Jacob and Clare’s safe. It was dated days ago, not weeks.

Tess nodded, the action unbalancing her so I had to grab her arm and prop her upright again. “Tha’s right,” she said.

Her eyelids started to droop. She popped them open again only with tremendous effort, wagging a strangely naked finger in my direction. “And the sort of people his family’s tied up with,” she mumbled conspiratorially, “you don’t wanna know where he might’ve got it, huh?”

Her eyes were closing again. I shook her shoulder, none too gently.

“No you don’t, Tess,” I said. “No sleeping here. Back to your own room. Come on, up!”

She allowed me to drag her to her feet and waltz her, unresisting, towards the door. I’d just got it open when she suddenly snapped awake.

“My rings!”

I used her as a doorstop against the heavy self-closing mechanism while I retrieved the saucerful of jewellery, tipping the contents into her cupped hands. I was intending to just shut the door behind her but, by the dazed way she was looking round, I reckoned she wouldn’t find her way back to her own room. I checked my key was still in my pocket and stepped out into the corridor with her. She instantly half-collapsed onto me.

“Need a hand?” I looked, finding, to my surprise, that Jamie was walking towards us from the direction of the stairs.

“Good timing,” he said. He held up a key. “Daz sent me up with this so you can tuck her in. How is she?”

“I’m not deaf, y’know,” Tess grumbled, lifting her head from my shoulder.

“Well you obviously didn’t hear them say ‘you’ve had enough’, did you?” I muttered under my breath.

Jamie grinned at me and slipped an arm around Tess, taking the weight. “You go ahead – number twelve,” he said. “I’ve got her.”

Still clutching her fistful of rings, Tess threw her arms round his neck and held on like it was the last slow dance, grinding her hips against him, head buried against his chest. Jamie didn’t necessarily look like he was upset by the experience.

By the time I’d found the right door, opened it and turned back, his hands had dropped to her skinny rump.

“Leave her alone.”

He looked up, eyebrows climbing at the stone-cold note in my voice. “Come on, Charlie, lighten up.”

“She’s drunk and she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” I said, frozen. Not an argument that works every time. I discarded it and tried another. “And I hardly think Daz is going to be overjoyed to find you doing the nasty with Tess when she’s supposed to be with him.”

“He don’t want me,” Tess said, muffled and mournful into the front of Jamie’s shirt. She lifted her head and gazed, sniffing, into his eyes. “You want me, don’t you, Gnasher?”

“No he doesn’t,” I said grimly, disengaging the pair of them and almost shoving her into the right room. She paddled backwards and sat down on the nearest of the two beds with a thump.

“Tha’s not fair,” she wailed. “You’ve got Sean an’ he’s gorgeous an’ now you want Gnasher as well, an’ I ‘aven’t got nobody.”

“That’s right, Tess. Goodnight,” I said cheerfully, and shut the door on her.

I turned to find Jamie was still grinning. “I really feel I should stay with her,” he said, “just to, erm, make sure she’s all right.”

“Leave her alone,” I repeated, knowing he was baiting me and rising to it anyway. “Because if she regrets what she’s done in the morning, I’ll be the first to back her up on it, understand?”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa, OK, I’m sorry. I was only joking,” he said. “I didn’t think you even liked Tess.”

I rubbed a hand across my face, suddenly tired and flash-tempered. “What the fuck has that got to do with it?”

The smile finally disappeared. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and meant it this time. “I would never take advantage of a girl.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “What about Clare?”

He stared at me blankly for a moment. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the ten grand, Jamie.”

He swallowed but before he could reply we heard footsteps approaching and the murmur of voices. An elderly couple appeared, dressed up to the nines, and stopped outside a door further up the corridor while they hunted for their key.

Jamie waited until the door had closed behind the couple, then jerked his head towards the room opposite Tess’s. “Look,” he muttered, “let’s talk about this inside, yeah?”

He produced his own key out of his jeans pocket and shoved it into the lock. Inside, the room was very similar to mine, maybe a touch smaller and the twin beds were both singles. I recognised Paxo’s leathers hanging on the wardrobe door.

Jamie caught my glance. “No-one wants to share with William,” he said by way of explanation. “He snores like an industrial buzz saw. It’s bad enough being in the same building.”

There was a little nervous catch to his voice as he spoke, as though he’d suddenly realised that by inviting me in like this he’d potentially put himself in harm’s way.

I leaned my shoulder against the wall next to the doorway, blocking his escape route.

“Why did you need the ten thousand, Jamie?”

“Oh, erm, well, I wanted to buy a new bike and—”

“Don’t,” I said. The single-word command worked much better on Jamie than it had done on Sean. He shut up like I’d just hit the mute button on the remote control.

“Clare’s already told me that you came to her in trouble and she agreed to lend you the money,” I said. “All I want to know is why you needed it. The truth. What’s Daz got on you?”

“Daz?” Jamie squawked. “No, no, no. It’s not Daz who—”

He broke off, realising he’d been suckered, and gave me a smile of self-derision.

“OK,” I said, folding my arms. “Who is it?”

He moved over to the bed and sat down nearly as heavily as Tess had done, putting his knees on his elbows and slowly rubbing his face with both hands.

“Look, I borrowed some money about a month ago from Eamonn.”

“Eamonn?” I said, trying to tone down the disbelief in my voice. “Everyone’s favourite philanthropist?”

He lifted his head, flushing. “Yeah, I know that might seem stupid to you, but he’s been an OK kind of a guy, y’know? Up ‘til then, anyway. I-I needed some dosh and Mum wouldn’t lend it to me. Eamonn overheard one of the rows we had about it and the next day he just handed it to me – in cash, just like that.”

“And you didn’t think to ask what he might want in return for this princely gesture?”

“Of course I did,” he said, scowling. “He just fobbed me off, y’know?”

“How long did it take him to change his mind?”

Jamie’s scowl deepened. “Couple of weeks,” he muttered. “He was apologetic at first, then started getting creepy about Mum, said as how he didn’t want this to hurt her.”

“In what way?”

“Fuck me, I don’t know! You think I wanted him to spell it out for me?”

“And that’s when you went to Clare.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Why did you want Clare to meet you at Devil’s Bridge? Why not just go to the house?”

Jamie looked glum. “I didn’t want Dad to know about it and I didn’t know he wasn’t at home until—” he broke off, shrugged, “—well, afterwards.”

“And did Eamonn know about this?”

“Probably – through Mum.”

I was silent for a moment, considering. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that Eamonn went after Clare – and Slick – because he wanted to keep you in his debt, is there?” I asked mildly.

Jamie’s head had begun to drop but now it snapped up. He jerked to his feet, suddenly restless. “No way,” he said, shaking his head like he could shudder the thought free. “No. Eamonn wasn’t even in the country last Sunday. He was somewhere in Europe – flew back into Manchester on Monday. Mum went over to collect him from the airport.”

I refrained from pointing out that Eamonn didn’t have to be driving the van himself in order to be responsible for it.

“So how did they know about the crash?”

“I spoke to Mum on Sunday night,” he muttered. “I told her then. She must have told Eamonn when she picked him up.”

“And they decided they’d see what they could nick from the house before Jacob got back,” I said.

I looked up in time to see a guilty expression flirt across Jamie’s face and suddenly I put it all together.

“But there wasn’t anything to nick, was there, Jamie?” I said quietly, “Because you’d already been into the safe and grabbed the money before your mother arrived. All that stuff she came out with about us being after the same thing. She just wanted the cash and, when she realised I either didn’t have it or wasn’t going to let go of it, she set Eamonn onto me.” I saw by his face I’d got it nailed and the realisation fired my anger. “Didn’t you give a shit about what had just happened to Clare?”

Jamie stopped pacing in front of me, put his hands on my arms. “Look, Charlie, I—”

At that moment there was the rattle of a key in the lock. The door swung open and Paxo walked in. He stopped abruptly when he saw the two of us, frozen like that, and a sly grin spread across his face.

“Oops – sorry,” he said, totally unrepentant. “Didn’t know I was interrupting anything. You want me to go and come back later, mate? Or can I stay and join in?”

Jamie’s hands dropped away like he’d just had his fingers burned. I levered myself off the wall.

“I was just leaving,” I said, stalking out past Paxo with as much dignity as I could manage. “And anyway, Pax, I hardly think I’m your type – for a start, I’m not inflatable.”

Back in my own room I was too tired to spend much time turning over what Jamie had told me. I stripped off my clothes and cleaned my teeth before climbing straight into bed. There’d be time to dissect it all in the morning – when Sean was back.

The realisation of just how much I missed him, needed him, came to me right on the edge of sleep. It was my last conscious thought before I pitched into the comforting darkness.

***

I woke. The room was still blacked out and the building was silent but I knew something was different. Something was wrong.

I sat up and was about to reach for the bedside light when there was a quiet slither from across the other side of the room. The small lamp on the chest of drawers by the TV clicked on. I winced at the sudden glare, screwing my eyes up until they’d had a chance to adjust.

Sean sat in the chair next to the drawers. He was wearing his T-shirt and leather jeans, and his bike jacket was laid across the bed next to mine. He still had his hand on the lamp switch and, when I was able to focus again, I saw that he was smiling.

“Don’t you ever knock?” I demanded, surprise and the sudden awakening making me grumpy. “How did you get in?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said easily, “and you really should remember to use the security chain. That lock was hardly much of a challenge.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said.

He got to his feet, untucking the T-shirt and starting to gather it upwards from the hem. My heart started to thunder so hard I almost had to raise my voice to be heard over it.

“What are you doing?”

He stilled in mid-undress. I had to force myself not to stare at the expanse of smooth flat skin already on show.

“Making use of your spare bed,” he said. “It’s too late to check in – even if they’d held a room for me – but I didn’t want to climb in until you’d woken up. You’d probably have killed me.” He was only half joking.

“Oh, well in that case, make yourself at home,” I said, trying for casual.

He smiled. “Thanks.” And with that he disappeared into the bathroom.

I lay down again and stared at the ceiling. I knew I should have been thinking about what Sean might have found out after he split off from the rest of us, but the fact that the Vauxhall had turned up at the hotel shortly after we did seemed to answer that one.

Instead, my brain was being ruled by my body. By the opportunity presented by having Sean in the bed next to mine. What if . . .?

The bathroom door opened and he clicked off the light. He’d stripped down to his shorts and now he draped his leathers across a chair and turned back the covers on the other bed.

Go on. Ask him. Invite him . . .

He moved across to the light by the TV and reached for the switch.

“Sean—”

He paused, glancing back to me. His eyes were in shadow and I couldn’t read his face.

“What is it, Charlie?” His voice was gentle.

My nerve failed me.

“Erm, goodnight,” I said.

“Goodnight, Charlie,” he said softly, and plunged the room into blackness again.

***

The next thing I knew I was sitting bolt upright in bed with my breath coming fast and shallow and my eyes wide open. I had no concept of the passing of time. It seemed I’d only just let my head fall back and it had bounced me straight up again.

For some reason this second disturbance of my sleep brought with it a burst of unreasoned rage. I froze, listening for a repeat of the sound that had woken me, prepared to lash out. Then it came again and, with a sense of profound shock, I recognised it for what it was.

Someone was crying.

The realisation snuffed out my anger instantly, dried my mouth yet threatened to wet my eyes. Slowly, I swung my legs out of bed and sat there, gripping the edge of the mattress. The silence went on long enough for me to imagine it must have been part of a dream, where nothing comes as a surprise. Not even the idea of a man like Sean Meyer weeping in the night.

And then I heard it. Little more than a gasp, a catch in his breath, brim full of anguish and pain. My night-dilated eyes could just make out Sean’s restless figure amid the snarled-up sheets only a metre or so away. For a moment I did nothing more than watch him sleep and listen to him dream.

The dream was hot enough to make him sweat, savage enough to send his heartrate soaring, and dark enough to force out quiet whimpers from between his clamped lips. Trapped in slumber, his subconscious was free to torture him at will.

I had nights like that myself.

I leaned over and stole a hand across the bedclothes. I found his twisting fingers and crept my own between them. He gripped tight, blindly, not knowing I was there. Instinct taking succour where it was offered, like a frightened child.

I suffered from my own nightmares. It had never occurred to me that Sean must have his monsters to face, too.

On the surface he seemed so calm, so solid and, despite what I might have thrown at him in anger, so in control. I’d never considered his doubt or pain. Yet here he was, crying out in his sleep and needing comfort of his own. Did I really have anything to offer him that hadn’t been irreparably damaged in transit?

Hesitant, I stood, pushed back the sheets and slid into bed alongside him, reaching out to him. His body was heated, febrile, so that where our skin touched I almost expected it to sizzle. For a second he resisted, tried to push me away. If he’d continued I think I would have let him, but he didn’t.

He seemed to rise a layer out of the hell where he’d been burning. Not enough to wake, but enough to recognise me. Or somebody like me.

He let me slink under his arm, sneak my head onto his shoulder and wrap my limbs across his shuddering body, anchoring him in this reality. His roughened chin skimmed the top of my head. I could feel his breath in my hair, slowing.

I lay awake and listened as his body began to drift, as his pulse climbed down. And I decided, fiercely, that I would give as much as I was able to. As much as Sean would take. Two broken halves could not necessarily be put back together to form a whole, but I had to try.

For both our sakes.