‘Not mine.’ He sways a little and then he straightens and shakes his head, like he’s trying to sober up. ‘Thanks though.’
As I take it from him, I lean forward and replace his wallet.
The exchange is complete.
I wish him a good night and head off.
Back on the pavement I turn and look back. He’s standing where I left him, studying the walls, as if he’s expecting a doorway to magically appear. He moves toward the brick and his white hair catches on the light. It looks like a dandelion clock, soft and fragile.
Jem
I circle back round the outer edge of the pond to the shoreline and climb the steps to Hannah’s garden. At the top I brace, certain I’m about to be intercepted by a guard or a roving torch, but the lawn is empty. Every light in the house is ablaze and yet there is no sign of anyone in the kitchen or in any of the other windows.
The French doors are unlocked. I come inside and close them behind me.
‘Hannah?’
Nothing.
Maybe she didn’t come back here after all? Or maybe she has been and gone, the guards having taken her off to be questioned and charged? The thought of her in an interview room leaves me short of breath, like someone has taken a fist to my stomach.
I’ll call the police, turn myself in. Tell them she had nothing to do with the escape, that it was all me.
I’m headed upstairs to the living room landline when I hear something. A man on a phone. He sounds like he’s in the hall near the front door and he has this way of pronouncing his words, his mouth cupping the vowels as if to protect them from a bitter wind, that makes him hard to understand.
Rupert.
Hannah must have called him, asked for his help, or he heard what happened and came to check things out.
Not wanting to startle him, I hold up my hands in surrender and slowly climb the stairs. I haven’t gone far when he says something that makes me take pause.
‘We have a problem.’ He takes a breath, like he’s trying to find the courage to say the remaining information out loud. ‘John’s wife. The dead undercover, she knows.’ He exhales hard but his respite is short-lived. ‘Don’t you think I realise that?’ he hisses, his anger tinged with fear. ‘Look, she says she has proof.’ His tone steadies but retains a certain amount of grit; he’s still annoyed but trying to hide the fact. ‘I’m meeting her now. I’ll sort it.’ He goes quiet and I think the call is finished, but it seems some accusation has been levelled against him, some question of doubt, and he retaliates, whiplash-fast. ‘I got rid of the friend, didn’t I?’
Mind reeling, I retreat into the kitchen, trying to make sense of what I’ve heard.
Rupert was involved in or knew about an undercover officer’s death?
Roddy Blessop?
Who is the friend?
Aisling?
Rupert said Hannah was on her way back here. I need to talk to her first, to tell her he can’t be trusted. This could be the final piece of the puzzle. But the moment Rupert sees me I’ll be arrested and once I’m back in the system who knows how long it will be before I can talk to her again.
I try to calm my breathing, consider my options.
I could hide out, hope he leaves her alone at some point and then take my chance, tell her what I heard before I’m whisked away in a van. I scan the kitchen looking for a spot. There’s only one place I know I won’t be seen. In the cell, under the bed.
I want to let Hannah know to be on her guard, but I can’t text her and if I left her a note Rupert might see. I’m scanning the kitchen for something, anything, when I land on a flash of colour in the corner. The fridge magnets. Hannah freaks out if anyone even so much as brushes past them.
I rearrange the letters into a warning, a message only she will understand. Then I slide myself and my backpack underneath the bed. The sugar figurines I’ve collected these past months sit lined in a row on the skirting board, like old friends waiting to greet me. I twist to flatten myself against the wall and the peak of my baseball cap knocks against the underside of the mattress. Thuds on the stairs. Rupert is on his way down to the kitchen. At the last second I take off my cap, reach out my arm and place it back up top on my pillow. I slink back under the bed just before Rupert appears.
He paces up and down, opening and closing drawers, turning the tap on and off. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Then I hear her.
Hannah.
She comes down to the basement. They talk.
She left the mansion because she thinks I lied about my feelings, that our relationship was a con. She’s so sad.
Rupert presses her for more information on the dead undercover and she tells him what she discovered. I watch their feet, see Hannah move away, and then I hear drawers being pulled open and the clatter of cutlery crashing back and forward.
She tells Rupert she’s having a hypo and he rushes toward her, guides her into the cell. The mattress lumps toward me as she lies on the bed. She asks him to go next door to ask for fruit juice and he complies.
I don’t understand why she doesn’t take the dextrose in her backpack. Has she lost it somewhere along the way?
I wait until he’s gone and then I slide out from under the bed, but before I can get to my feet I hear him returning. He must have had second thoughts; there is no way he’s gone next door in that time. He seems to think he has something that will help but Hannah is against it, she sounds distressed.
The mattress above me flattens, like Hannah has fallen onto her side, and I hear someone calling for Rupert upstairs.
Hannah is quiet. Too quiet.
Once he’s gone I take my chance. I don’t care if he comes back down and sees me. Something is wrong.
I find her lying on her side, eyes closed. By her feet is a syringe and a vial of insulin.
I understand then.
All the things he’s done and why.
Her backpack is nowhere to be seen. I open the fridge and the cupboards only to remember she cleared them out. The delicate metal tools she used to sculpt fondant lie in rows, like surgical instruments.
The figurines.
What was it Hannah said? They should come with a health warning because they’re nothing but pure unadulterated sugar.
I duck back under the bed and reach for the last character she gave me, a man with a tiny swaddled baby in his arms.
I grab a mug and teaspoon and dissolve the man’s feet in a small amount of water. Then, after propping Hannah up on the bed, I drip tiny amounts of the liquid onto her tongue. Her breathing is shallow, her skin pebbled white. I keep going, drip, drip, drip, and under my breath I tell her that I love her, that I’m sorry, and pray that enough of the sugar dissolves into her bloodstream in time.
A shadow rises onto the wall in front of me.
Before I can turn round something stamps hard into my lower back and I lurch forward. My head hits the wall. Thud. I ricochet back to the floor, my arms sprawled. The spilt sugar water puddles by my wrist, sticky and wet.
Rupert
Something’s up, I know it.
After a week of gruff one-word answers and a refusal to look me in the eye he’s asking if I want to go for a drink after work. It’s something we do all the time but today it feels wrong. Like getting on a plane the morning after you dreamed it would crash.
Symeon wants to see me later and so I suggest we head east, to the bar. John isn’t keen and asks if we can go somewhere else. That’s when I know.
He wants out.
I persuade him to come to the Kingsland Road and we order drinks. His pint arrives and he takes a sip, then straightens. He’s yet to say the words but he already looks relieved, like a rock has been lifted from his shoulders. He’s going to tell me he’s had enough, that he doesn’t want to do this anymore, that it’s too stressful, that he once had an idea of himself that was good and decent and that he wants to be able to think like that again.
I’ve never had the luxury of choice. I�
�m trapped, have been for some time.
‘It’s over,’ he says and gestures to the bar. ‘All this. I’m not doing it anymore.’ He sups at the lager. ‘Neither are you.’
All this.
It started small. A blind eye here, a tip-off there. Payment in kind. But snowballs get big quick and as my debt grew so did the favours. You blink and a tiny sphere that can fit in the palm of your hand is suddenly a boulder, big enough to crush you and anyone who gets in its way.
‘You know it doesn’t work like that,’ I say, quietly, ‘once you’re in, you’re in.’
‘That’s just it,’ he says and I realise that what I thought was a burden being lifted was actually him bracing. ‘I’ve never been “in”, as you put it, not really. I only made it seem that way.’
When I was seven I managed to follow my father up the Orange Wall at Symonds Yat. He was aghast I’d managed it, full of praise, but then, as we made our way back down, the belay failed and ten feet from the bottom the rope holding me went slack. That’s how this feels, like that moment before I started to fall, when my toes still bobbed against the dry rock and I moved past trees slowly, leaves tickling my cheek.
He tells me he suspected I’d started taking bribes a while back, but he didn’t want to believe it. We were friends, partners. I was a good man, the best. He wanted to be sure and so, before he made any kind of accusation, he set me a test, told me about his credit card debt, showed me the statements, said how much he and Hannah were struggling to make ends meet.
I took the bait.
‘I had no intention of reporting you. I wanted to find out what you were into and then help get you out. But then in that first week I heard a rumour. The Heppels had murdered an undercover officer, made it look like suicide.’ He drains the last of his pint, orders another. ‘I needed to find out if there was any truth to it, and if so, who was responsible. So I kept going.’
Lying in a heap at the bottom of the wall, ankle broken, I had tried not to cry while I waited for Dad and Hugo to reach me. Hugo got there first. ‘You mustn’t let this spook you,’ he said, taking my hand in his, ‘you mustn’t let this stop you from trusting the rope.’
John lowers his head, fixes his eyes on the battered wood table.
‘You tipped them off,’ he says, his voice cold. ‘Told them he was a UC. Signed his death warrant. Why?’
There are many answers to this question.
Do I tell him about after my brother died, how all I could think about was his frozen corpse at the top of that mountain and the people stepping over him in their quest to get to the summit?
Do I tell him about the money, the car, my house, how it’s all gone, how even now I can’t stop? How when I’m playing I feel better, separate from what happened and the thought of Hugo’s body lying there like litter, his face furred with ice.
Or do I tell him how when you’re caught like I am, caged by your own need, you find yourself capable of things you never thought possible?
He’s already figured out the bare bones. Has already imagined how, as soon as I got wind a UC had been placed into the Heppels’ network, I panicked they’d learn I was dirty and expose me. How I ultimately decided this was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.
‘He had a wife and children,’ he says and he can’t hide his disgust. ‘A baby on the way. I’ve been to see them. Tried to make reparations.’
I found out about the undercover by accident. Mickey had started drinking again, often at work, though most people had no idea. Me included. There was a crossover with an armed robbery we were working on. I stumbled on something I shouldn’t and Mickey, worried I was going to jeopardise the operation, warned me off. At the time she was a bit worse for wear, let slip his codename. After that it didn’t take me long to figure out who he was. It takes one to know one.
‘Why are you even here?’ I say, suddenly furious. ‘If you’re going to report me, just do it already.’
‘I wanted to give you the opportunity to turn yourself in.’
I laugh.
‘And ruin my whole life?’
‘Prison,’ he says quietly, ‘is being trapped inside something you can’t get out of. If I’m not mistaken, you’re already there.’
He tells me he hasn’t spent a penny of the thousands he’s been paid, that he’s kept it all secure, evidence, ready for when the time came.
I head for the door, expecting him to come after me. I try my hardest not to turn round and check, to trust the rope, but when I get to the exit I can’t hold out any longer and look back. He hasn’t moved. His head is still down, his gaze fixed on the table.
On the street I get out my burner and call Symeon. Tell him about John.
‘You need to change his mind.’ He’s cavalier, straightforward, like I’ve just asked advice on how to change a tyre. ‘Get him to see sense.’
He doesn’t need to say it. This will be worse for me than them. The person they got to kill that UC is long gone, they made sure of it. Pinning anything on anyone will be impossible. I on the other hand— In the old days bent coppers had a terrible fear of going to prison. There was nothing the other convicts hated more than an ex-pig. Now those found to be corrupt serve their time in a cell installed in their old nick. Their ex-colleagues become responsible for their care. I saw one once at Paddington Green. There was no abuse, no nastiness, they just never spoke to him. Ever. He sat on the bed watching them work, a mushroom of a man, fleshy and white.
I think it’s worse.
The thought of that happening to me.
The shame.
The humiliation.
I feel like I’m in a collapsing building, the fear pushing down on me like broken brick, the sheared concrete squeezing and pressing, crushing my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
I walk the length of Great Eastern Street, toward Hoxton, trying to work out what to do. I think of my father’s face once he hears the news. His brow will not be furrowed in disappointment, his mouth will not drop open in shock. There’ll be one quick nod, as if to say, ‘Of course,’ and he’ll go on with his day.
I imagine sitting in the dock in court. The judge’s gavel sharp in my ear.
I need to find a way to convince John to keep quiet.
I call. Ask if we can talk some more.
‘No point.’ His words are thick with drink. ‘Never mind all the other stuff, what happened with Marzipan Rain, what happened at The Warlaby. We have to tell her.’
Mickey. What will she say when she realises what I’ve done, who I’ve become?
‘Please,’ I say. ‘Five minutes.’
‘My mind’s made up. Tomorrow, I’m going to tell her everything.’
‘Come meet me on the Coal Board roof,’ I say, desperate now. Halfway down Rivington Street, the roof is one of the places we like to go when we need to puzzle out a case. We stumbled on it a year ago when we were investigating an attempted murder. The victim, a chef, worked in a restaurant at the bottom of the building and had been found beaten half to death in a stairwell four floors up. The roof was supposed to be secure but we’d discovered that if you went up to the restaurant toilets and then kept going you’d reach a metal door that opened onto the top of the block with a city skyline view. A short walk from the bar, it will give us the quiet we need to talk properly. More than this, I hope it will remind him of our friendship, our bond. ‘Please, ten minutes, that’s all I ask.’
Finally, he agrees.
‘I’ll head now.’
Tears blur my vision. Relief.
‘See you up there,’ I say and use the heel of my palm to wipe them away.
I go in through the restaurant and to the toilets out back. There, I launch myself at the stairs, taking them two at a time until I reach the top floor and the metal door. A shove and I’m on the roof. The air up here is clogged with meat smells from the food trucks below, the night sky studded with light. Shoreditch High Street sits diagonal to here, one block back, but its traffic smog travels well. One breath
and I feel it hit the back of my throat.
Five minutes pass, then ten. I go to stand at the top of the stairs and listen out for footsteps. He should have been here by now.
My burner buzzes with texts from Symeon wanting to know how I’m getting on.
I’ve almost given up and am working out whether to call Mickey now instead of waiting for the morning, to confess and get it over with, when I hear something.
Voices.
They’re coming from below, somewhere back toward the high street. I lean over the barrier, squinting into the gloom. The Coal Board sits next to a much shorter building and beside it there seems to be a cut or some kind of alley. Long and thin, large industrial bins lining its walls. Then I see him. John. He’s talking to someone but I can’t see their face.
He must have got lost, or maybe he stopped to relieve himself?
The man he was talking to walks away, back toward the high street.
‘John,’ I call down to him, ‘John, up here.’
He staggers left and right, his shoulder bashing against the wall as he tries to locate the source of my voice.
‘Rupert?’ he says, once he has me in his sights.
‘The entrance is one street across,’ I say, sketching the route in the air. ‘On Rivington, remember?’
He sways, like he’s trying to orient himself, then pushes his hands up and away in defeat.
‘I’m going home. I’ve had too much to drink to talk properly.’ He turns.
‘No.’ I think of the convicted copper I saw in Paddington Green. Think of myself sitting there. Reviled. Ignored.
He can’t leave, he mustn’t.
‘I’ll come down. Wait.’
I’m about to head toward the metal door and the stairwell when I see that he’s already walking away. By the time I get downstairs and run the length of Rivington and round to the high street he’ll be long gone.
I assess the drop to the alley. It’s at least fifty feet but if I clamber down onto the squat building that adjoins this one, then boulder the rest of way to the alley, it won’t be so bad. I could be there in minutes.
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