Upstairs I cleaned up my flat and ripped all the paper from my wall. I wished I had a fire to burn it in but I didn’t. I thought about how I’d woken up, almost certain that Mike had killed and mutilated Ally. I knew that, whatever happened, even if somehow one day Mike got to forgive me, that fact would never change.
Once I’d filled my kitchen bin with the screwed-up pieces of A4 I told myself that there was only one thing I could do for Mike now. Find out who had killed Ally, as well as one and perhaps two other women. I phoned Andy but only got his voicemail. I wondered if he’d seen my number come up and decided not to take the call. Clay would have spoken to him, told him to keep me out of it. I suddenly felt isolated. On my own. I was frustrated at the thought that there could be information that I wouldn’t have access to. Once again I had that feeling of there being nothing I could do that wasn’t being done. I had to wait for Andy to get back to me, tell me if the car had been traced, whether the woman in the boot had been identified. Whether he’d got his hands on the CCTV tape from the Lindauer. I just had to trust that he would call me. While Andy would want to do what Clay told him he’d also want the collar. That would be it for him, he’d go sky high. I banked on the hope that Andy wouldn’t want to pass up the chance of me helping him get it.
I dialled Mike’s number but didn’t leave a message. I thought about going down to his flat again but he didn’t want to see me. What good would my explanations be to him? I took the ten-minute walk down St John Street instead. A hundred years ago there were fifty pubs on St John Street because it was a major thoroughfare. There aren’t fifty now but the bars and restaurants have been steadily increasing in number over the last ten years as the City workers have moved into the lofts that artists can no longer afford. The Old Ludensian, at the bottom of St John Street near Smithfield, is still the best. I walked in and saw Toby, Nicky’s head barman, pulling a pint.
Toby jerked his head to a corner table, where I saw Nicky looking into an ashtray, a bottle of Middletons beside him, the foolishly expensive Irish whiskey we’d drunk on the day we’d met. He looked up when he saw me, using his leg to push out the chair opposite him. I was about to turn round to the bar, to get another glass, when I noticed that there was a spare one in front of Nicky.
‘I had a feeling you’d come down,’ he said. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘No.’
‘Neither have I. And we’re not going to, are we?’
‘I don’t think I am.’
‘Me neither. You want a beer, anything?’
‘This is fine,’ I told him.
Nicky and I spent the next six hours together, going through the rest of the bottle in front of us before moving on to another. It could have been meths for all we tasted of it. We talked about what had happened, what we felt about it, while the bar churned around us. I told Nicky about Dalston, then the tunnel. And Mike. Nicky told me that I wasn’t to blame, in fact I was right to think what I had. What Mike had said had nothing to do with reality, it was just what he was going through. I told him that Mike’s reality was something I should have thought about.
‘Imagine, Christ, if Sharon had been killed. Would you ever have thought it was me?’
‘No,’ Nicky said. ‘Not even if I saw you do it.’
‘So how must he feel? Did you think it was Mike? In the office that night?’
‘I didn’t even wonder.’ Nicky shook his head. ‘I just didn’t want to be anywhere near him, whether he did it or not. And you know what? This is terrible, but I still don’t. It’s like he’s contagious. I’d hide if I saw him in the street, I really would. Why the hell is that?’
The bar emptied and Toby closed it down and at some point closed the door behind him and left Nicky and me alone. The bar was dark but for the bands of orange street light pushing in through the huge slats of the blinds. We talked some more and sat some more and drank some more too. I had that feeling again, the solid numbness inside, as the events of the day sorted themselves out within me. I knew I needed the time just to sit, not to rush round trying to do things, and I also knew that I needed to do it in the Old Ludensian. Spending time with Nicky had always helped me, allowed things to settle. Maybe one day I’ll understand why.
When we’d finally gone through everything we could think to say about what had happened, another deep silence sat in the air between us, coaxing us back into our own thoughts. Eventually Nicky managed to find the distant cousin of a smile.
‘Would you have slept with her?’ he asked, stretching back in his chair. I looked at him. ‘The TV exec, the funny one. You know, Ruth?’
I shook my head instantly but then thought about it properly. I saw the long, slender body and felt Ruth’s hand on the top of my knee in the cab. I remembered how much I’d enjoyed her company but for some reason I knew that, if it had come to it, in spite of any paranoia I was feeling about Sharon, I’d have resisted any advances she might have made.
‘No,’ I said finally. ‘I was tempted but we’d have just crashed on the sofabed in my office, then woken up to monumental hangovers. And relief. Both of us. She was married, you know?’
Nicky nodded, accepting my answer. ‘Why not, though? Because you felt guilty, or you were too mashed?’
‘Neither.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Why not then?’
‘I’m past it.’ I laughed. ‘Meaningless shags when you’re pissed. Why do something when you’ve done it so many times before? When you know it isn’t going to do anything for you. I’d had a great time, I’d got everything I wanted out of that evening. What about you with the other one?’
Nicky laughed too.
‘I already did.’
‘What?!’
‘In the khazi. Nice and spacious at the Sixty-Two, I’ll say that for the place. She was bending over the sink to do a line. I just couldn’t help myself. If it’s any consolation…’
Nicky let his words tail off. He frowned to himself and the expression on his face caught me. He looked old, but not like Andy Gold had done. It wasn’t in his body, it was in his eyes. As if what he was telling me had happened in the distant past and his memories put a nasty taste in his mouth.
‘That was the last time,’ Nicky said. ‘I’m finished with all that. I want what you have. What Mike had. I want the thing I’ve been running from all my life.’
My friend looked so earnest, so intense, I almost believed him.
Nicky offered me the sofa in the flat upstairs but I said no. I walked back up to the Market, glad of the cold night air. I reached into my pocket for my keys but stood for a second before going upstairs. Again I had the intense wish that Sharon was up there. I wondered what it would really be like to share my life with her, my space, everything. I wondered what she’d say if I asked her. I thought about the foreign correspondent again, the one I’d imagined that night, this time edging closer to Sharon as he told her about the poverty he’d witnessed up in the mountain regions. The image was ludicrous, stupid and clichéd. But it really got to me. I shook my head and laughed at myself, but wasn’t able to shake the pang. I pushed up past my bike, chained to the banister halfway up my stairs, struck by the fact that everything, everything in my life had changed. For ever. The world was different and when Sharon came back it would be more so again, one way or another.
The little red light on my machine was winking and I took a breath. Sometimes you just know who has called you, you know with a certainty that doesn’t even strike you as odd. I felt tense, my arms light and my stomach suddenly cold. I looked down at the machine as Sharon’s voice filled my apartment.
‘Oh,’ Sharon said. ‘You’re not there. I really hoped you’d be there.’ Sharon’s voice sounded small and a long way away. ‘You’re not at your office, though you know that! Listen, Billy, it’s all turned a bit dodgy over here. The camp got surrounded by people trying to get in and the people who are inside were getting angry because there’s not enough food reaching us. Some shots were fired at our buildings. The Marines came and took us out and flew us to Islamabad, where I am now. And I’m coming home. The UN said they wouldn’t make us go back to Afghanistan, and though most of the team are going I’ve decided not to. I’m about to get on a flight. I only have two weeks left anyway and well, well, I just thought why risk it? Shit.’
I heard a flight announcement but I couldn’t make out what it said.
‘I’ve got to go. My plane gets into Heathrow tomorrow morning. Ten-fifteen your time, allegedly. BA 97. If you could be there I’d love it, Billy, but I know it’s last minute and you’re probably working, so don’t worry. If I see you there I see you. I’ve got to go now but, oh, I’ll say it, you can freak if you want. I love you. And I can’t wait to see you. Get a sausage casserole on or else. Bye.’
I let the tape rewind and then I played the message over. Those two, last, impossible weeks. They’d been removed, cut out of my life like a cancer. I couldn’t believe it. I looked at my watch. Eight hours, that was all I had to wait. Then I’d be with her. I smiled as I waved goodbye to the foreign correspondent, hopefully for the last time.
But then I realized; she didn’t know. I thought she might have seen something, in the international Guardian or a report on the World Service. But I could tell, by her voice, that she hadn’t. I’d have to tell her. I knew it. Yet I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to, not straight away, not for a minute at least. I’d leave it. I’d hold her first and kiss her. I’d wait until I’d seen the smile that always cut a canyon straight through my heart.
It would be like going back in time.