Back at the flat. In the shower. Heat turned all the way up. Skin lobster red. The pain enough to keep me awake. Eyes closed. Colours dancing in the dark. The sluice slapping against my skin.
I was alive.
I could feel it. In the water. In the heat.
I was alive.
For now.
When I was finally done, I towelled vigorously. Skin softened, threatening to rip off beneath the thick material of the towel. It felt good. I felt good.
I was alive.
The idea percolated in my brain. An important thought. Something to be remembered.
The buzzer intruded. Insistent.
Kellen?
Not Findo.
The old man, then? Malone? Someone with a gun or a knife?
Schrodinger’s hard man? You’d never know until you answered the call.
I answered, wrapped in the towel, still dripping water. If death was waiting, I wasn’t meeting him with dignity.
‘It’s me.’
I buzzed her in.
Susan.
Memories.
Mistakes. Skin against skin. Whispered words. Broken promises. Secrets that tie people together as much as they tear them apart.
Susan and I had a complicated history.
We almost worked it out. A few years back, just before her father died, we almost got it right. But we had always been hanging by a thread, and the revelations in the wake of Ernie Bright’s murder marked the beginning of the end for us.
She walked out. Went travelling. To ‘find herself’.
No dramatics. No lingering resentments. No long building and simmering hatred. But things just went wrong. Wrong time. Wrong place. Wrong people.
I took it personally. Pretended I didn’t.
And now she was back in my life. Sandy Griggs’s lover. And his partner in the SCDEA. Both of them keeping it covert, knowing the kind of shitstorm that would come down on their heads if anyone found out.
Mind you, I had a feeling there was a lot that a man like Griggs kept hidden from his superiors.
‘Why are you here?’
Susan walked through to the living room, sat down on the sofa and looked at me with eyes that hid their intentions. Her dark hair was cropped short, and she was dressed down in jeans and a heavy jumper. She looked tired. You could see it there, in and around her eyes. Bloodshot pupils. Dark patches that makeup couldn’t quite disguise. Lack of sleep. You had to wonder why. Or maybe not.
‘I know I shouldn’t be here.’
‘So why?’
‘Tell me why you did that with Gaske? You put everything we’ve worked for in jeopardy.’
‘He killed two men.’
‘There are bigger—’
‘Jesus!’
Silence between us. The Susan I knew would never have mentioned ‘the bigger picture’. She’d have winced at the very idea. Had what happened to her been so bad that it destroyed her sense of right and wrong?
I remembered the death of the man who was responsible for her father’s murder.
No one was ever sure who it was that burned down the storage container where he’d been tied up.
But I always had my suspicions.
We all do crazy things in grief. I should know.
I always wonder what would happen if I met the man who ran me off the road. So many years past. The car crash, and the death of my fiancée a memory, now. Sometimes it felt as though it had happened to someone else. Although I still retained the yearly ritual of visiting where she had died. As though I was afraid that to stop would mean losing her entirely. All the same, while the memory of the accident informed who I was, it no longer defined me in the way it once had.
All the same, I had to wonder.
What would I do if I met him? If I knew his name? His address?
Could I control myself?
Could I maintain the detachment I’d forced myself to build up over the years? Or would I discover the foundations were rotten? Useless, even before they were laid?
‘There is a bigger picture, McNee.’ Her voice was calm and steady. But just underneath that you could sense the hurt scratching away at the confidence, scrabbling to be heard. ‘You know it. I know it. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.’
‘He killed two men.’
‘He would have paid for it.’
‘And so would I.’
‘You’ve been paying for your imagined sins your whole life, McNee. I thought your dad was only a lapsed Catholic. Didn’t figure he’d brought you up with the finer art of guilt.’
I went to the window, looked out at the street. The sky was getting dark. The threat of rain was in the air. An oncoming storm.
She said, ‘We have to make sacrifices.’
‘That you speaking? Or Griggs?’
‘He’s a good man.’
‘Is he? Aye, well, he used to be. I know that much.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m not so sure. Being righteous is not the same as being right.’
I took the armchair. We looked at each other across the living room. Between us, you could have crossed time zones.
‘He blackmailed me into this,’ I said. ‘Whatever way you look at it.’
‘You’re a stubborn man. Sometimes you need a little persuading.’ A smile threatening at the edges of her lips. Something of the Susan I remembered. The woman I could have fallen in love with if I wasn’t careful.
‘You’d know better than most.’
She’d always been there for me. That was what still ate at my heart. I hadn’t been there for her. She’d needed me when her father died, and what I did was take her grief and make it into my own. Shutting her out even more than I had before. If I hadn’t done that, maybe things would have worked out different.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Life can become a series of regrets. If you let it. No one knows the shape of their world until they look back on what went before. What most of us see are paths not taken, choices never made. How we should have acted. We curse ourselves for being blind to those choices as though somehow we should have seen the consequences. Even though it would have been impossible at the time.
Are we fated to always make the choices we make?
Does it matter that we have the illusion of free will?
Are our lives determined by outside forces?
We are determined by biology, social standing, other people. We are never completely in control. We’re barely able to keep a handle on our interior state, never mind what’s happening around us.
Or is that merely an excuse?
Susan licked her lips. Swallowed. ‘If we do this, we take down David Burns for good. We do what my dad always wanted. But we have to do it properly. We have to know he’s not going to slither out from under us. You know that, right?’
‘And what do we sacrifice for that? I can’t allow more people to die.’
She seemed about to say something, but then she stood up. ‘I don’t know why …’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t … I should …’
She walked to the door. I got up, ran to catch her. In the hall, I placed a hand on her shoulder. She turned round.
My breath caught.
I wanted to say something. Didn’t know what.
Didn’t need to say it.
After, she sat on the edge of the bed. Didn’t wrap herself in the sheets. Didn’t grab her clothes. Just planted her feet on the floor, kept her back to me.
I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Takes two, aye?’
‘Guess so.’
‘Always been a problem for us.’
‘Guess so.’
More silence.
I got on my knees and shuffled across the mattress so I was beside her. Said, ‘You and Griggs, still …?’
‘Not for the last few months. You talked about righteousness. You and him, Steed, you’re more alike than you realize. You’re obsessives.’
‘At the expense of everything else?’
‘A modicum of self-awareness?’ She let herself smile, and fell back on to the bed. ‘Wonders never cease.’
‘People can change,’ I said. ‘Sometimes they can grow.’
‘It just takes a while.’
‘Sure,’ I said. I brushed hair from her temples. She was covered in a light sweat. Her breathing was a little ragged.
‘Can we just lie here for a while?’ she said. ‘Not say anything.’
That was fine by me.
More than fine.