25

‘Not open yet?’

She was wearing a light-grey tweed skirt and matching cinched jacket, a silky ruffle-front top and a dark-brown belt around her slim waist, everything working to highlight her willowy parts. Laced-up suede Louis heels and a maroon leather clutch under her arm. Hair out and lush and lustrous. Jack shut the door and left the Closed sign on it and wondered what he was going to say. Took a little while, so it was Beaumont moaning from the storeroom who got in first.

Claudia frowned and turned towards the sound. ‘Who was that?’

Jack sighed, then thought what the hell. ‘Wait a tick. I’ll just go get him.’

‘Who?’ She watched him walk past, confusion in her eyes. ‘Is it Duncan?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, defeated by the longing in her voice and the lie in Beaumont’s line about her still being in love with him. ‘But wait here.’

‘No!’

She ran past him, crashing her shoulder to Jack’s side, and into the storeroom. A couple of seconds later he heard her scream and hoped nobody else had.

Duncan Beaumont was slowly coming to.

‘Oh my god!’

‘He’ll live, relax.’ Jack peeked out through the back door: as hoped, the rain had washed away what blood had seeped out of Mick and onto the asphalt of Market Row. Would calling it a blessing amount to blasphemy?

‘What … what happened?’

‘When you play with guns, somebody’s bound to get hurt.’

She looked down at the body on the floor. ‘Is he dead?’

‘Yep.’ Jack went over to Beaumont, grabbing him under the arms and pulling him up into a sitting position. He leaned him back against the boxes. The guy groaned as though having a bad dream, still not quite with them yet. Jack put a cigarette in his mouth, watched Claudia with her eyes locked on her fiancé. He said: ‘Your boy did it.’ It was harsh, holding back the fact that it was an accident; but there, he was doing it.

‘He works for Kippax, doesn’t he?’ she said, looking at Mick, her calm a little disconcerting.

‘You know him?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve seen him a couple of times. Never talked. Roberto told me that he was Kippax’s right-hand man.’ Then she whispered: ‘Fuck.’ Knelt down beside her fiancé.

Jack frowned. ‘You spoke to Florez?’

‘You said no. Who else was going to help me?’

‘Florez?’ Jack did not mean to say the name again but it came out of his mouth like a divot.

‘He rang me.’

‘What else did he say?’

‘Just that he wanted to speak to Duncan. Try and help clear up the mess he’s in with Allan Kippax.’

‘And you believed him?’

She paused. ‘I don’t know what to believe.’

Jack did not like the girl’s each-way-bet tone. ‘Florez wants to give lover boy to Kippax so that he can hurt him. Badly. That what you want?’

‘I … I don’t know …’

‘Christ.’ Claudia was thinking about which direction to move, but none of them were heading for Jack. ‘Beaumont used you,’ he said. ‘And Florez is doing the same thing.’

‘So what the fuck do you think I should do?’ Her anger was hot and quick and Jack might have lit his cigarette off it. He stood there silent, suddenly seeing her confusion and the emotional edge that she was walking, poised on unsteady heels. Claudia was hurting for love and Jack was acquainted with the feeling. He had no idea what she should do. He could not offer her a thing.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘You just can’t trust Florez, okay?’

But she was touching Beaumont’s face now, red and raw as a split pomegranate. His nose was starting to swell and his eyes, too, and there was a deep slash denting his forehead a little below his perfect hair line: not bleeding, just a rich blue bruise that would no doubt spread to a wider area within the next couple of hours. His head would feel like a big hot ball of straining, sinewy pulp, leaking tears and waiting to burst, but never delivering the relief. Jack was glad — and hoped it hurt Claudia to look at it.

‘My darling …’ she said, but her eyes were vacant, her mind on something else.

‘My head,’ said Beaumont, reaching up but not touching it, as though having his hand just in the vicinity was enough to cause hard pain.

‘Just don’t move. I’ll call an ambulance.’

Jack tapped ash at Big Mick’s feet. ‘No ambulances.’

‘But he’s got a head injury, Jack. What if —’

‘What if it helped cure him of his stupidity?’

Claudia dug into her handbag, angry again. It was probably the best way to be: better a good hard feeling than a murky grey one. ‘I’m calling them,’ she said.

‘Then you can call the police while you’re at it.’

She looked up from the phone.

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘I’m fucking calling them,’ she said, but not convinced anymore.

‘I need this to go away,’ said Jack. ‘And so do you. And he definitely does.’ He stubbed his cigarette and moved to push the situation past her. He stood over Beaumont. ‘Can you stand up? You’ve got to get out of here.’

‘Jesus.’ Then he noticed his fiancée at last. ‘Claudia?’

She stared at him.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you.’

‘Hey, Beaumont?’ Jack was not interested in a show. ‘Are you listening to me?’

The guy looked up, squinting through pain and swelling. ‘What?’

‘You need to get out of here.’

‘Why?’

Jack nodded at Mick’s huge dead body on the floor.

‘Fuck!’ Beaumont pulled back in shock.

‘Is the picture coming to you yet?’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘No, son. You did.’

‘What?’ Terror filled his battered face, bleeding some of the colour of the welt that had consumed it. He looked at his right hand, to see if the gun was still there.

‘Get a grip. You need to hustle. Claudia can take you.’

He stared at the body. ‘Was he after me?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Jack was pretty sure that Mick had come to return the kick to the nuts from the card game. That he was following Beaumont did not seem likely: if Mick had known where he was beforehand, he would not have waited to grab the guy. ‘I’ve got to make a phone call.’

‘Jack.’ Claudia now reached for his arm.

He stopped, gave her a half-arsed glare, because he was angry now too, but could never hold it when she was looking at him like that. ‘You know what?’ he said, rushing, so that he said it and did not stumble over his regret. ‘Everything that’s wrong in this room here right now has got nothing to do with me. You people brought it in. Understand?’

‘I know.’

‘Jesus, like I need this and … and you and … the whole goddamn kit.’

‘I know.’

Jack pulled up in surprise: was that sympathy in her face?

‘I’ll get Duncan out of here. Can you handle that?’ She nodded at the body.

‘What?’

‘I agree,’ she said, eyes sparkling but straight. ‘You need to get rid of it, Jack. And so do I.’

He glanced down at Mick then back at the beautiful woman who was driving him nuts. She looked like she knew what she was talking about. ‘A second ago it was call the cops,’ he said.

‘No cops. I’ll get the mess out of here.’ She stepped towards him and leaned into his ear, and the smell and hot presence of her made him go temporarily blind. ‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ she said. And kissed him on the mouth.

Beaumont groaned. ‘My fucking head!’

‘Come on,’ said Claudia, quickly bending down to him. ‘Let’s go.’

Jack stared at them for a moment. ‘Wait.’ The kiss lingered warm on his lips. He did not want her to go. ‘Just wait there a second, okay?’ He turned and left the storeroom, his brain plummeting through thick clouds of confusion. But one thing was for sure: Claudia Brandt was not telling him everything that was going on in her sweet sexy brain.

Back at the counter, he dialled Astrid’s number.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Jack.’

‘Hey, darling, how are —’

‘I’ve got Beaumont.’

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘If you want him, come around to the shop.’ Jack thought of her Porsche. ‘But bring something with a boot.’

‘You want to tell me what’s going on, Jack?’

‘When you get here.’

A pause while she did some thinking. Then: ‘Beaumont’s there?’

‘That’s what I said. Bring a car with a decent-sized boot and you can have him. As long as you’re a good girl and don’t ask any more questions.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Not yet.’ His mouth was doing the talking, but not necessarily because his brain was telling it what to do. ‘Don’t be long. Glendenning wants him as well.’

Jack hung up. He checked the front door for any customers hanging around, saw none and picked up the phone again.

Sinclair eventually answered. ‘Bookstalk. Yeah?’

‘Chester. It’s Jack.’

‘Didn’t you just hang up on me, you motherfucker?’

‘Customers, what can I say? And there’s a dead guy in my storeroom. Look, thirty bucks a box, okay?’

Sinclair took a sharp breath, ready to loose a salvo of expletives, but then held it. Let the air out slow. ‘Twenty-five.’

‘Twenty-nine fifty.’ Jack was in a hurry but knew the guy loved to haggle. The indulgence was necessary.

‘Six.’

‘Eight.’ Jack could hear Claudia and Beaumont arguing, coming to him unclear but punctuated with shouting.

‘Twenty-seven nothing and that’s fucking it, Susko.’

‘Done. I’ll send them around right away.’

A pause. ‘So why’d you change your mind?’ Chester Sinclair, always with a nose for rats in the hold.

‘Couple of bills in the mail,’ said Jack, as straight as he could muster. ‘The postman always stings twice.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sending a guy around now, okay?’

‘All right.’ Sinclair, dubious. ‘Just don’t slip any fucking romance novels into the stock. Cause I’m checking the lot.’

The line fuzzed faintly. ‘Till next time, Chester.’

Jack walked back into the storeroom. Beaumont had not moved. Neither had Mick. Claudia stood over her fiancé, arms crossed. A new tension in the room, but he did not want to know. He said to her: ‘Have you got a car?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bring it round the back. There’s a bookshop out on Glebe Point Road where you can wait until I get there. Just deliver some boxes and then hang around, look at the books.’

Beaumont lifted his head out of his hands: face pale but red in the cheeks where his knuckles had pressed. ‘Why?’

‘Astrid is coming,’ said Jack. ‘You know, the chick that tried to shoot you in the car park? Probably better you’re not here when she arrives.’

‘I don’t get it,’ said Beaumont. ‘You’re not calling the cops?’

‘Jesus, just shut up, Duncan, okay?’ Claudia was shaking her head. ‘We’ve all had enough of Mr Stupid, yeah? Do as Jack says.’

Her fiancé frowned, confused. Her tone was all venom and no love. Jack was starting to feel awkward, and not just because there was a dead body in the room.

‘Everybody wants to kill you, understand?’ she said. ‘So just don’t fucking say anything for a while.’ Claudia was letting Beaumont wear it large.

She got no arguments from Jack. He had his own situation to contend with. He wanted Astrid to take the dead body and make it somebody else’s problem. If she saw Beaumont there, then Jack knew she would just let Mr ASIC fly for it and solve Ziggy’s problem nice and neat: of course, leaving Jack with the cops, too, handling the end that Brandt had tossed him with the eviction notice. Once the body was gone, Claudia could sort it out with her fiancé fool.

‘I’ll write down the address,’ he said. ‘It’s a big second-hand bookshop, you can’t miss it. The guy’s name is Chester. Give him the boxes, tell him you’re browsing and then I’ll come and tell you when it’s all clear.’

Beaumont went to say something, his eyes round and grateful, but Jack held up his hand. ‘Save it,’ he said. ‘I’ll bust you on this in a second if you don’t do exactly as I say. We clear?’

Beaumont nodded.

‘I’ll get you an umbrella.’

Claudia grabbed him by the arm. ‘Thank you, Jack.’

He looked at her, saw the lost expression and the anger in her eyes. Somehow knew it was not meant for him. ‘Maybe later you can tell me what’s going on.’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Soon as Duncan explains it all to me.’ Grinned, but not like anything was funny.