I arrived at the café late. I’d had to travel back to the hotel, grab China’s laptop and then trek back to Kensington. Fortunately, the hotel extended my checkout time so that was one less thing to concern me.
Jat was already seated. He still had his trademark dark hair and sideburns. He did a double take when he saw me.
‘I apologise for my clothes,’ I said, getting in first.
‘Don’t tell me – an all-nighter and you got mugged on the way home?’
‘Something like that.’ I ordered a double espresso and handed him the laptop.
‘Want me to open it now?’
I looked around the café. Mums with young kids, teenagers, a couple of old folk. ‘Can you do that?’
‘I can do anything,’ he flashed.
‘Cocky sod.’
As it turned out, he couldn’t. He tapped keys, chased from one window to another, muttered something about lockdowns and case-sensitive passwords and a host of other stuff I didn’t understand.
‘With time, could you open it?’
‘Sure.’
‘How long do you need?’
‘Days, a week, who knows?’
This was not the answer I wanted. ‘Are you busy right now?’
Jat’s face lit up. ‘Got quite a workload.’
‘It pays well?’
‘Sure does.’
‘I’ll triple it if you put my job ahead of everything else.’
He let out a big ‘whoa’ and then a ‘yay’. I have never understood the popularity of these phrases, which translated mean ‘goodness’ and ‘yes’, but it was a welcome response.
Jat didn’t need a sign of good faith. He knew I was all right for the money. I drained my espresso and stood up. ‘I’ll phone you in a few days.’ Before I left I asked a question that had been nagging me for the past year.
‘Your little brother, is he behaving himself?’
A smile sprang to Jat’s lips, warmth in his eyes. ‘Found himself a nice girl with a wicked sense of humour.’
I was glad. ‘He’s seen the light then.’
The edges of his smile faded a little. ‘Yeah. It was touch and go for a while. You know he never talks about it but something bad happened, something really freaked him.’ He looked at me with a questioning expression.
People got killed, including the men he was mixing with. I shook my head in a ‘don’t ask’ gesture. ‘He’s fine, that’s all that matters.’
* * *
I walked to the nearest Tube station. The sky was dull and the perishing east wind made me shiver in my party gear. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut in my exchange with Simone. My momentary loss of control was a bad sign. I guess I was taken aback that a woman, who seemed so self-possessed and cool, had cared enough to want to comfort me. It had been a long time since that had happened.
About to cross into the Underground, I spotted a newspaper hoarding: ‘MAN’S BODY FOUND IN THAMES NEAR LUXURY DEVELOPMENT’. I stopped, picked up a Metro and read it while crushed between an Italian guy talking non-stop on a phone and an Eastern European woman with a small, unsettled baby. The piece was patchy, not particularly informative, but the time frame matched China’s missing status. It did not say how the man died but death by drowning was the clear inference. In a population of millions, it could have been anyone in the drink. In my bones, I knew it was Hayes. You reap what you sow. Whatever China had intended for me was lying dead on the mortuary slab with him. It didn’t mean I was out of danger. Now China’s killer, whoever he was, would be gunning for me.
I returned to the hotel, showered and changed, packed and checked out. I didn’t return to the lock-up. I went straight to Paddington to catch the train back to Cheltenham. Before heading for the main station, I stayed on the Underground, tracing the route of my last journey over a year before on the day that Billy died. I stood on the same platform in roughly the same position, imagined him standing up ahead and close to the tracks, unaware of my presence. Closing my eyes, I remembered how I’d moved forward, the way he’d turned, the frozen shock on his face at the grim realisation that what goes around comes around.
I visualised the faces of those nearby, mouths open in horror at the tumbling man, women screaming, men reaching for mobile phones, some standing mute, fists pressed into their mouths. Not one had stood out from the crowd. On that fateful day, my single purpose had been to get away, to escape. I had – yet I had not.
I returned to the main concourse from where I boarded my train. Going back would be tough. My hometown now the focus of the enquiry, the place would be thick with police and security services. Most would be on the lookout for McCallen, the rest, if they could be spared, on the hunt for me. They were not my greatest fear. Someone was jerking my chain and I had a sense that in the game that lay ahead there were only two players.
Him and me.