Road Kill

Four

When we got back to the ward Jamie had pulled his chair up close to the bedside and was sitting leaning forwards intently and holding Clare’s hand. He jumped up looking flustered when he saw us.

“So who’s the kid?” Sean asked quietly while we were still too far away for him to overhear.

“Jacob’s son, apparently.”

He raised his eyebrows and I shrugged. “Don’t look at me,” I muttered. “Until I caught him breaking in at some ungodly hour this morning, I didn’t know Jacob had a son, either.”

Clare smiled warmly at us as we drew nearer and held out her hand to me.

“Charlie,” she said, giving my fingers a fierce, heartfelt squeeze. “Thank you. For everything.”

“No problem,” I said, taking the chair Sean unstacked for me, alongside another for himself. We sat on the other side of the bed, facing Jamie across Clare’s wired limbs. “You were right about Bonny, by the way.”

She frowned. “What about her?”

“Last night,” I said. “You asked me to go and look after the dogs because they’d been stuck in all day. Don’t you remember?”

She shook her head. “Wow,” she said, looking round at us, “I must have been completely out of it.”

“But you remember telling me about the van?” I said.

“Van?”

“You talked about the Transit van that hit you,” I persisted. “You called him a determined sod.”

Sean glanced at me sharply but my eyes were on Clare’s confused face.

“I-I can’t remember,” she said, fretful. Her colour had begun to rise.

“Leave her alone,” Jamie said, tense. “It’ll come back to her when she’s ready.”

I sat back and looked from Jamie’s set expression to Clare’s embarrassed one. Not the right time to push it.

“OK, OK,” I said, contrite. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just want to get to the bottom of what happened.” Even then I couldn’t entirely let it go, but I smiled to soften the question down. “I thought you hated being a pillion passenger.”

“I do, but what I do remember is that the bloody Ducati wouldn’t start and I’d promised to go up to Devil’s Bridge,” Clare said, smiling back at me now, although a little faintly. “Slick arrived – to see Jacob about some parts, I think – just as I was struggling with it and he offered me a lift.” She shrugged and lay back carefully against the pillows. “Just bad timing, I suppose.”

It was more than bad timing, but even though I didn’t voice the comment she regarded me anxiously. “There are going to be all sorts of rumours flying round about this, aren’t there?”

There already are, I thought, but what I actually said was: “I expect so.”

She reached out and put her hand on my arm. “Sean’s told me you’re looking for Jacob,” she said. “When you find him, please don’t say anything to him about Slick. I-I’d rather explain things to him myself.”

It was the note of desperation in her voice that rocked me and for a moment I didn’t speak, straightening in my chair.

“Clare – what is there to tell him?” I demanded. And what is there that you’re not telling me?

She seemed to realise she’d said too much. Her lips thinned and the lower one began to tremble. As if on cue, a nurse came bustling up and swept us all with an accusing glare.

“Are you all right, Clare?” she asked. “Can I get you something for the pain?” And when Clare nodded she rounded on the rest of us, her tone ominous. “I think it might be best if you all left now,” she said. “I don’t think you appreciate that Clare’s been through major surgery and she needs to rest.”

We rose obediently. Sean bent to kiss her cheek and she gave him a quick hug. Jamie just offered a cross between a wave and salute. I reached down to squeeze Clare’s hand but she gripped it, hard, and held on.

“I just need to speak to Charlie for a moment longer,” she said pleadingly to the nurse, not letting go of my hand. “Just a moment. I promise.”

The nurse scowled a little more, but the heat went right out of it when the force of Clare’s smile hit her. Clare could do that to people.

“All right then,” she said with a grudging indulgence. And to me, more sharply: “Then you’re out, yes?”

“OK,” I agreed meekly and sat down again.

Sean met my eyes fleetingly as he began to shepherd Jamie towards the doorway. There was everything and nothing in that brief glance.

Clare waited until they were well out of earshot before she spoke again, tracking them anxiously.

“Charlie, I need you to do something for me. For us, really,” she said, keeping her voice low so I had to lean towards her to hear it properly.

“Name it,” I said, without hesitation.

Clare hesitated a moment. She let go of me and toyed with her nightie instead. She was wearing an elderly sack in faded cotton with the words ‘hospital garment’ running through it in red and blue letters so that from a distance it looked like a pattern. Stops people stealing them, I suppose. I was suddenly glad I’d brought her her own stuff.

“I need you to look after Jamie for me,” she said in a rush.

“What?” It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I sat up, my face blank. “Why?” I said.

She flushed a little. “He’s going to Ireland with a group of bikers at the end of this week,” she said. “Some trip Slick was organising, I think. I-I don’t want him to go.”

I frowned, remembering the conversation I’d had with Jamie last night. “But he’s from Ireland,” I said. “I can’t stop him going home.”

“It’s not that,” Clare said, her face miserable. “It’s the people he’s going with. They’re, well, they’re like Slick. They ride like a bunch of total idiots and they’re going to get him killed. Jamie hasn’t had his licence for that long. He’s on a bike half their size and he won’t admit he can’t really keep up.” She gave me a wan smile. “You know what these fellers are like.”

I did. Clare was ferociously quick. She’d left more than one bike wreck behind her as a testament to the foolish assumption of less experienced – and usually male – riders that any corner she could take, they could take faster.

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” I said. I nodded to the mechanical construction that was holding her bones together. “At the moment, he might just listen to you.”

She shook her head. “I’ve always been something of the wicked stepmother to Jamie,” she said with candour. She was folding the edge of the starched sheet over and over, her eyes fixed on her fingers. The knuckles of her right hand were bruised solid purple like she’d been in a fight. “I mean, Jacob and Isobel’s marriage was history long before I came on the scene but when I did I suppose Jamie knew they weren’t ever going to get back together again. He’s always resented me a little for that, I think.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

She stilled a moment, like she hadn’t thought it through that far, then shrugged, looking close to tears again. “I don’t know,” she said, back to restless. “I suppose I was hoping that, if you can’t stop him going with them, you could, maybe, even go with him?”

It was said hesitantly enough to turn it into a question, with a little wince at the end as though she was expecting me to shout her down.

I didn’t shout. I sat still for probably five full seconds wondering how to ask when my friend had developed this massive maternal instinct for someone else’s child. And why.

Clare took my silence for refusal. “Please, Charlie,” she said, reaching to grab my hand again. “Look, you’re a bodyguard now, aren’t you? So – I’ll hire you! Name your price.”

She said the words with a big smile but there was panic in her voice and cowering behind her eyes. Across the other side of the ward the nurse’s head snapped up like she could sniff the patient distress in the air. She started to move purposefully in our direction.

“Charlie, please!” Clare said quickly, sounding desperate now. The panic had climbed out of the background and was in full flight across her face. Her fingers gripped tight. They were unnaturally cold.

“I want you out, now!” the nurse snapped with thunderous restraint. “I will not have you upsetting my patients.”

I stood up, ignoring her, and summoned up my best reassuring smile for Clare.

“It’s OK,” I told her. “I’ll look after him.”

It wasn’t until I was heading for the ward doorway that I wondered how on earth I was going to make good on that promise.

Sean was waiting for me, leaning against the wall in the corridor. Of Jamie there was no sign.

“She OK?” Sean asked, falling into step beside me.

“Mm,” I said, still distracted. “She’s just hired me to act as Jamie’s bodyguard.”

Sean didn’t scoff, as anyone else might have done. A dent of concentration appeared between his eyebrows. “What’s the threat?”

I smiled. “Himself, I think.”

He stopped. “But you said no,” he said and it wasn’t a question.

I stopped, too. “I said yes,” I said, surprised. “You saw her back there, Sean. How could I say no?”

“Because how can you protect him when you’ve no idea what the threat is and he’d probably run a mile rather than agree to submit to being under your protection anyway?”

“Thanks very much,” I said tartly.

He made a brief frustrated gesture. “You know what I mean,” he said. “It’s like going on a lads’ night out and taking your mum with you.”

I put my fists on my hips and tried to keep my face under control. “You are so not helping.”

His frustration flashed over into humour. His face relaxed a little and he smiled ruefully. “Sorry,” he said. He raised his hands in surrender. “OK, let’s go put it to him that you’re going to be his bodyguard and see what happens.”

“After all,” I said, wry, as we started moving for the exit again, “it won’t be the first time I’ve had to babysit an arsy kid, now will it?”

***

When we got outside, though, breaking the news to Jamie about my new role in his life suddenly became a side issue.

William and Paxo were still there. In fact, William was still sitting on his Kawasaki not looking like he’d moved at all apart from removing his helmet. The padding had left two matching imprints in the flesh of his cheeks. The helmet was resting on the tank and he had his arms folded across the dome of it.

Paxo was still standing by his Ducati like a terrier – stiff and bristling and looking ready to bite someone at any moment. Jamie was next to William, as though for protection, but this time he wasn’t the one who had Paxo’s baleful attention.

The big biker who’d accompanied Tess to the hospital the day before was standing up close to the front of Paxo’s bike. He had three carrier bags in one massive hand, and two bike helmets in the other, dangling from their straps.

One helmet was open face and matt black in colour – clearly his own. The other was an expensive custom-painted Shoei. It wasn’t until we got closer I realised from the damage that it must have been Slick’s. There was a nasty scrape across the front of the tinted visor and a sizeable gouge out of the gelcoat on one side that allowed the white inner shell to show through like bone.

Poking out of the top of one of the bags I could see the zipped sleeve of a distinctive black leather bike jacket. He must have just been in to collect Slick’s effects. All his worldly goods distilled into a few plastic bags.

The big man’s eyes skated over Sean and me once, lingered on Sean for a moment longer, then he turned back to Paxo and carried on his conversation with hardly a break in stride.

Not that ‘conversation’ quite summed it up. Both of them looked just about ready to come to the boil.

“I’m tellin’ you, you can’t go without Tess,” the big guy said now, his jaw set stubbornly.

“Why not?” Paxo tossed back.

The biker’s eyes slid pointedly in our direction for a second, then skipped back. “We already been over that,” he said. “You owe her, all of you. Big time.”

Paxo threw up his hands and clenched his fists, as though he would have liked nothing better than to feel them close round the other man’s throat. He would have needed a stepladder.

It was left to William to say calmly, “Look, Gleet, we know it was Slick’s idea and we won’t forget that, but we’re on with it now. It’s nothing to do with Tess any more. She’s got to let it go.”

“‘Let it go’?” Gleet, the big biker, echoed bitterly. “What about the money?”

“She’ll get her money back, don’t worry,” William said, his voice soothing. “We won’t see her short.”

“That’s not the point,” Gleet persisted, scowling. “You need her.”

“I don’t think so, mate,” Paxo said. He fished into the inside pocket of his leathers and came out with a packet of cigarettes that had all the corners bent, and a Zippo lighter. He lit up, cupping his hand round the flame and eyeing Gleet through the smoke. “This is going to be a fast trip – you know that,” he said as he exhaled. “We don’t have room for passengers.”

As he spoke his gaze flicked to Jamie and it seemed the comment worked on more than one level. Jamie managed a defiant stare in return. He’s on a bike half their size and he won’t admit he can’t really keep up.

“Tell ’em, Gnasher,” Gleet said, and it took me a moment to work out who he was talking to. “You were Slick’s mate. He stood up for you. You tell ’em.”

Jamie smiled blandly. “It’s not up to me, is it?”

“Oh right. Gone and fuckin’ forgotten already, huh?” Gleet let his breath out fast down his nose, flaring his nostrils like a cart horse. It wasn’t a good look for him. His arm came up and he stabbed out an accusing finger. The carrier bags swung wildly. “Some mates of his you lot are!”

I felt my stomach tighten as the heat rose one notch closer to outright ignition but Sean was already moving in. He angled his body so Gleet was forced to turn away from the others, opening up a gap, giving the steam somewhere to go. I moved in, too, reinforcing the stance Sean had taken.

“I think that’s enough,” Sean said quietly. “You’ve said your piece. Don’t take this further here than it needs to go.”

Gleet glared at him. He held his ground a few moments longer, his face belligerent, still hoping that his undoubted reputation would do the job for him. But when he realised at last that his bad name wasn’t going to carry the fight alone, he weighed the odds and wisely threw in his hand.

Gleet stepped back and glared at each of the faces in front of him, ours included, as though he was committing them to memory.

“You bunch of losers have no idea,” he said with quiet venom, shaking his head, “what you’re gettin’ yourselves into.”

And with that he turned on his heel and stalked away.

***

Sean and I were very restrained. We waited until we were away from the others before we backed Jamie up against a wall. At least, I backed him there with my fists wrapped deep in the weave of his T-shirt.

Gleet was long gone. William and Paxo had lidded up and hit the starters to fire up those loud pipes, and swept out of the car park. I hadn’t much cared about that one way or the other. I’d much more pressing matters on my mind. I wanted answers out of Jacob’s son and I wasn’t too fussy how I got them.

Sean let me lead it, just closing in on my left, standing apparently casual but in exactly the right place to block anyone’s view. He had his head tilted slightly and a mildly interested expression on his face, like he was waiting to see how badly I was prepared to hurt Jamie, but he wasn’t planning on interfering.

We were just outside the entrance to the wing that housed the Accident and Emergency unit. The planners had left nooks and crannies in the exterior design that I imagine were normally a refuge for the nicotine-addicted. It was certainly private enough for what I had in mind.

“Hey!” Jamie protested now as I bumped him back against the brickwork. He was smiling, as though he still believed he could laugh his way out of this. It was only when he took a proper look at my face that he fully realised the error he’d made in allowing me to get hold of him. His attempt at amusement began to slip as his eyes flicked from my face to Sean’s and he found no comfort there either. His bravado surfaced.

“What is this?” he demanded. He brought his hands up angrily and swatted at my fists. That the action failed to break my grip clearly startled him. His head came up but the brickwork behind him gave him nowhere to go. I saw the first trace of unease. Not fear – not yet – but it wasn’t far away.

“What is this?” he said again but there was less attitude this time.

“What this is,” I said, “is the time that you stop bullshitting us and tell us exactly what’s going on here.”

His eyes slid to Sean’s face again. Mine followed and just for a second I saw what he saw. Without animation Sean’s face was hard, even cold, the slanted cheekbones like the angles of a mask, studded with that black wintry gaze. An arresting yet deadly set of features, capable of showing no mercy.

As I knew only too well.

Jamie swallowed and whatever snappy comeback he’d been about to make died on his lips. But he wasn’t quite out of courage yet.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. He heard the nerves tightening his vocal cords and swallowed again, forcing himself to relax.

“Come on, Jamie,” I said. “What was all that about with Gleet? Why is he getting so bent out of shape about this Irish trip? What’s the big deal with Tess not being allowed to go with you?”

“Slick paid up front,” Jamie said. “Gleet just wants to make sure she gets her money back.”

“How much are we talking about?”

He shrugged, as far as he could with me hanging onto the front of his shirt. “I dunno. There’s the ferry, hotels, that kind of thing. A fair amount.”

“Come on,” I said again. “That’s not enough to get so excited about.”

“It might not be for you, but Tess is on her own now and she’s got a kid to look after,” Jamie said, reproachful. “Slick wasn’t exactly the kind of guy to have life insurance, now was he?”

He was right there. The Slick Grannells of this world were too convinced of their own immortality to bother with anything so mundane. There was more, but I had a sense that Jamie wasn’t going to volunteer it.

“Clare’s asked me to go with you to Ireland and watch your back,” I said instead.

“You?” The single word burst scornful from his lips, propelled by surprise and a fine touch of resentment. Then I watched the memory of getting beaten to the floor with a rolled up magazine in his father’s hallway come back to him. He flushed, a deep rosy colour that flooded up from the open neck of his leathers and finished in the roots of his hair. “How?”

“Charlie’s job is close protection, did nobody tell you that?” Sean said, his voice mild. His eyes made a lazy pass over me. “She’s very good at it.”

Jamie’s own eyes shifted back to me and there was something else in them now. It was fleeting enough to be almost subliminal, but there might just have been a hint of relief. Then it was gone.

“No dice,” he said. “This isn’t some kind of grannies’ outing. You can’t just put your name down and turn up at the docks. It’s members only. You’ve got to earn the right to be there.”

I chose to ignore the granny gibe. I was only twenty-six – a year younger than Clare – but I suppose she was, technically, almost his stepmother. “Members of what?”

Jamie went silent, realising he’d probably said more than he’d set out to. Again the little flick of the eyes to Sean. Sean didn’t speak, didn’t change his expression, he just moved forwards maybe half an inch, barely more than a shifting of his weight. It was enough for Jamie. More than enough.

His gaze snapped back to meet mine, caught and held it like he was afraid to let it go. Like if he didn’t look at Sean the danger he represented might go away.

“The Devil’s Bridge Club,” he said quickly. “It’s just a group of bikers who’ve got together for a bit of a laugh, you know.”

“So how do I join?”

I felt his shoulders drop a fraction under my hands and he grinned at me unexpectedly. There was the sharp reminder of Jacob’s bones under his skin. It served to make me ease off a little. But not that much.

“Simple,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is qualify. There’s a meet on Wednesday up in the Lakes. You ride the route quick enough, you’re in.”

I got the impression from his sudden change of heart that the procedure was actually far more complicated than it sounded.

“Is that why William and Paxo are so set against Tess coming with you?” I asked. “Is she not quick enough?”

“She doesn’t even have a licence,” Jamie said, dismissive. “Slick was going to take her on the back of his. He reckoned he was just as quick two up.”

Two up.

“Was that what he was doing when he crashed?” I demanded. “Proving it – with someone who didn’t matter on the back?”

I felt him flinch under my hands. I gave him a shake.

“Come on, Jamie,” I said. “It doesn’t end there. What were you really after when you broke in last night? And even without the drive alarm, why didn’t the dogs go crazy?”

He huffed out a breath. “Maybe they’ve got good memories. Look, you’re making way too much of this, Charlie.” He paused, then hit me with that brilliant smile again. “And I told you, I was just after a place to stay. Fuck me, I used to live there, remember? It used to be my home,” he said and the smile turned bright and brittle. “I’ve more of a right to be there than you have, so back off or clear out, OK?”

And with that he jerked himself free of my loosened grasp, stepped round me and walked away, twitching one shoulder like a cat that’s had its fur thoroughly ruffled. We watched him go.

“Well that was fun,” Sean said dryly. He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. “What’s next?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” I said. My eyes were still on Jamie’s departing figure until he turned a corner and disappeared from view. My tone was gloomy. “You’re the ideas’ man.”

Sean smiled. “I thought I was just providing the muscle.”

***

We walked back to where I’d left my bike. Although I hadn’t known it, it was only three spaces away from Sean’s vehicle. His company had a pool of big four-by-fours and this time he was driving a black Mitsubishi Shogun. We stood next to it, awkward, Sean holding his keys. I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my leather jeans.

“So, do you want to stay at Jacob and Clare’s place?” I offered, trying to be casual.

“That would be good,” he said gravely. There was nothing in his face but I couldn’t help the feeling that he might be laughing at me.

He checked his watch. It was a big multi-dial Breitling on a stainless steel strap, a new model that even had a built-in distress beacon. He’d only recently bought it to replace his old Breitling and seeing it made me shiver. I’d once had to identify what I’d believed was his body by his last watch.

“I ought to nip over and say hello to my dear old ma first,” he said. “The bush telegraph will probably have told her I’m in town by now and if I don’t report in within a couple of hours she’ll never let me forget it.”

“You’re brave.” I said, nodding to the shiny new Shogun. Despite his best efforts to relocate her, Sean’s mother still lived on the notorious Copthorne estate on the other side of the river. Strange cars left round there unattended for longer than half an hour tended to come out minus various bits of their anatomy, like wheels and glass and stereo systems. “You sure it will still be there when you come out?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said with a grim little smile. “Are you going to go back to the house and keep an eye on Jamie?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But first there’s someone I’ve got to see as well.”

***

Sean didn’t ask questions and I didn’t fill him in on what I had planned. Instead I threaded the Suzuki through the traffic and cut through one of the side streets to bring me out close to the main police station. I parked the bike up in an inconspicuous alley nearby and walked in through the front door.

The officer on the desk took one look at my helmet and bike jacket and already had his hand out for my documents when I brought him up short with a demand to see one of his superiors. We had a brief stare-out competition while he decided whether to take me seriously or not. I won.

“Well, Charlie, this is an unexpected surprise,” Superintendent MacMillan said, rising from his chair a few minutes later as I was shown into his office. We were on a high floor with what amounted to a view, further away from the machine-gun chatter of a road drill breaking up part of Great John Street below.

He offered me his hand to shake, something he hadn’t done when he’d come to see me at the cottage. There he’d been on my terms. Here I was most definitely on his.

I hovered for a moment, came within a fraction of turning round and walking out again. Then I remembered Clare’s spiked figure and sat down abruptly. When I looked I found MacMillan watching me with that coolly calculating gaze of his, waiting for me to find my starting point.

That was another thing about MacMillan. Silences didn’t make him uncomfortable, however awkward others might find them. He would have sat there until doomsday and waited for me to speak if he thought it might be to his advantage.

“You remember Clare Elliot?” I asked but it was a rhetorical question.

“Of course.”

How could he not? Clare had been in the wrong place at the wrong time – my time, my place – and had nearly died for it. To my unending surprise both she and Jacob seemed to have forgiven me for that, even though I had yet to forgive myself.

“She was nearly killed yesterday,” I said. “On the back of Slick Grannell’s bike, on the road to Devil’s Bridge.”

“Ah.” MacMillan stood up. “Wait there,” he said and went out, not quite closing the door behind him.

I sat alone in the policeman’s office, staring at the wall behind the desk but not seeing it. I was seeing Clare and Jacob as I’d last seen them, on the terrace at the back of their house after a relaxed supper.

We’d sat and watched the local bat population scything through the midge swarms by the edge of the wood as the sun had gone down. My friends, happy and whole. And I saw how, whatever happened next, nothing was going to be the same again after this.

The door was pushed wider and I heard MacMillan come back in. He walked back round to his side of the desk, reading a typed report and frowning as he regained his seat and put the report down in front of him.

I cleared my throat. “Do you still need someone to infiltrate this road race gang?” I asked. “Because if so, I’m in.”

He leaned forwards and placed his elbows on the desktop, steepling his fingers together very precisely. He regarded me for a few long moments. I stared back at him and tried not to fidget.

“When I asked you to get involved in this, Charlie, it was solely because you were completely uninvolved,” he said. “Now you’re not. Now, I fear, it’s become personal.”

“Dead right it’s personal,” I said evenly. “Why else would I agree to this?”

“You do realise that there can’t be any favouritism here?”

“Favouritism?”

“If this Grannell character was indeed taking part in an illegal road race at the time of his death, then anyone connected to organising or taking part in these races is open to prosecution as an accessory,” he said.

I held his gaze steady and didn’t reply.

“At the moment,” he went on, tapping the report, “we can’t be certain exactly what happened. There was too much contamination of the scene by the other motorcyclists who arrived there before we did. Grannell and Miss Elliot were certainly hit by another vehicle, but as yet we don’t know if that actually caused the accident. We were hoping,” he added mildly, “that Miss Elliot herself might be able to help us.”

I thought of Clare’s confusion of this morning, compared to her apparent clarity of last night, and shook my head. “I doubt you’ll get much out of her,” I said carefully.

MacMillan was too self-contained to snort, but he let his breath out faster than normal through his nose. “Now there’s a surprise,” he murmured, “considering that, if she was a willing participant, she might also be liable.”

I felt my body stiffen, however much I tried to control it, and knew that MacMillan had seen it too.

“Whatever other game Slick was playing, he was just giving Clare a lift to Devil’s Bridge,” I bit out, ignoring the clamour of doubt at the back of my mind. “Nothing more than that.”

The policeman regarded me with a fraction of a smile. “You see?” he said gently, shaking his head. “You’re much too close to this to be objective, Charlie. I can’t use you.”

I stuck my open hands up in front of me to indicate surrender, stood abruptly and turned on my heel. I was halfway through the doorway when MacMillan’s voice halted me.

“We haven’t always seen eye-to-eye in the past, Charlie, but I hope you have enough respect for me to listen to some advice,” he said quietly. “Stay out of this.”

There was finality in his tone. No second chances. I ducked my head back round the door and gave him a tight little smile.

“That’s always been my trouble, Superintendent,” I said. “I’m really bad at taking advice.”