‘I know that,’ he responded, a touch irritably.
‘Gareth may already have learnt what “contra-indications position” means.’
‘Then I suppose he’ll tell us when he gets here.’ Don glanced at the time on the screen. 14.13. Gareth was late.
‘He’ll reckon contractor fifty-five is Jane.’
‘She might be. She might not be.’
‘Female. British. Three years older than Jane. Supposedly. It’s got to be.’
‘There’s no—’
Don was cut short by the burbling of his phone. Blake grabbed it before he could and glanced at the caller’s number. ‘Gareth,’ she said, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she handed the phone over.
‘Gareth?’ said Don.
‘Yeah. Sorry, but I’m not coming.’ Don caught a drift of railway station PA in the background as Gareth spoke. ‘You probably know why if you’ve got as far through the material as you should’ve by now. I’ve got to be where that meeting’s being held. I’m leaving straight away.’
‘You mean you’re—’
‘Best not be too specific on the phone, Don. You obviously get my drift. I’ve also looked at the other file you’ll have seen mentioned. There’s a lot going on beneath the surface. We can talk about it when you join me over there.’
‘You expect us—’
‘I don’t expect you to do anything. It’s your choice. But if you’re serious about achieving what you said you wanted, you’ll be on your way soon enough. Call me when you know what time you’ll be arriving.’
‘Hold on. I—’
But Gareth was gone. Don set the phone down and grimaced at Blake. ‘He’s plainly convinced contractor fifty-five is Jane. And he knows what these contra-indications are, apparently. He must’ve got into that file as well. But he’s saying nothing until we meet. I think he’s at Paddington, about to take a train to Heathrow. Destination Zürich, I guess. Then Zug, in time for Ingrid’s powwow with Crosetti the day after tomorrow. He wants us to follow.’
‘’Course he does. And we—’ Blake’s face fell. ‘Oh shit.’
‘We don’t have to follow him,’ Don said, hoping Blake had suddenly questioned the wisdom of what they were doing. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere.’
‘That’s not the problem, Don.’ She shook her head, closed her eyes and smiled with little apparent pleasure. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
‘Blake?’ He touched her shoulder.
She opened her eyes. ‘We have to go to Switzerland. This is our chance of finding Jane. She’s the key to everything. And I don’t trust Gareth not to fuck it up.’
‘I’m not sure that’s—’
‘We have to go.’
‘Well, I—’
‘How long would it take to drive to Birmingham and back?’
‘Er, four or five hours, I suppose. Depending on the traffic. Why?’
‘Because you need a passport to fly to Zürich, right?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘And my passport’s in Birmingham.’
Most of Mum’s boyfriends were shits, but Lee was pure evil. The way he got his hooks into Daisy was just horrible. I tried to save her. But I suppose I didn’t try hard enough. She never listened to me. I was just her too-young-to-understand kid sister. But I understood all right. I saw what Lee – and the drugs he was pushing her way – were doing to her. And then, the night it all ended, I saw where it had been leading.
Maybe Mum did too. But she didn’t do anything to stop it – just drank more so she’d care less. She was always good at that. I try to remember Daisy alive and laughing and vital. And I try to use that memory to keep that other memory – of Daisy dead at twenty-two – buried deep. But it doesn’t always work.
Gran died only a month or so after Daisy. She was sick by then, but Daisy dying was what really broke her. It nearly broke me too. But Gran always said I was the strong one of the family and it turned out she was right. Lee was afraid I was planning to tell the cops about his drug-dealing. I knew from the way he looked at me he wasn’t going to risk that happening. He was out of it a lot of the time, but he wasn’t too far gone to understand I was a problem. Because he knew, with Daisy gone, he couldn’t control me. Mum did whatever he wanted. Not me, though.
Why didn’t I go to the cops, then? I could have got Lee in big trouble. But the other low-lifes he was mixed up with would have come after me then. And none of it would have brought Daisy back.
I’d got the passport a year before, using Gran’s address. Mum never knew about it and I’d reckoned I needed to keep it that way, so I hid it under the floorboards in my bedroom. I’d been thinking of getting out for quite a while. Ever since Lee came on the scene, really. Mum was always useless. But he turned her into something worse, which I’d never have thought possible until it happened. It was the look in Lee’s eyes that morning that decided it for me, though. I realized time was running out. Fast.
It was a Saturday. I went into the city centre with some friends from college. I made an excuse for not going back with them. I just knew going home was a big mistake – maybe a fatal one. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. It stopped being a moment. It became the moment. I bought a ticket to London and got on the next train to Euston. It was raining. Night was falling. I was on my own. I’d never felt more certain I was doing the right thing.
But I didn’t need my passport to go to London. And I haven’t needed it since. I need it now, though. I need it badly.
Don’s not wildly keen to fly to Zürich chasing after someone he’s never met, but he knows he won’t talk me out of it. He’s not wildly keen to drive me to Birmingham to hunt down my passport either. He’d be even less keen if I told him about Daisy and the kind of men Mum gets in with, so naturally I don’t tell him. All I say is that I left in a hurry after falling out with Mum and forgot to take my passport with me. He knows I’ll go anyway, of course, and he suspects – rightly – that it’ll be much easier to pull off if he goes with me. He’s made a big mistake. Which I gently point out to him. He’s let himself care about me.
‘I don’t need protecting, Don,’ I tell him, which I realize might not be one hundred per cent true.
Don obviously reckons the percentage is much lower. ‘Yes you do,’ he insists.
‘I could use your help. I’ll admit that.’
‘That’s big of you.’
‘Are you going to help me?’
‘What makes you so sure your passport will be where you left it?’
‘I hid it under the floorboards in my bedroom. Only I know where. No one will have found it. They won’t have been looking. And Mum can barely find her own mouth with a glass most days.’
‘Have you really had no contact with her since you left?’
‘You bet I haven’t.’
‘How long ago is that?’
‘Seven years.’
‘For God’s sake, Blake, she could’ve moved in all that time.’
‘No chance. It’s a council house. She’s still there. I know she is. And I still have a key to the front door.’
‘So, you’re just going to let yourself in, prise up a floorboard, retrieve your passport and slip out again?’
‘If we get there at nine, she’ll be in the Highwayman.’ The sour, threatening atmosphere of that shit-hole pub invades my memory as I say its name. I can hear Mum’s laugh – the tinny, shrieking laugh she saved up for her drinking buddies there – and I shudder as I remember the sound. ‘She never misses. No reason why she should ever know I’ve been in the house.’
‘Simple as that?’
‘Yeah. Why not?’ Plenty of reasons, actually. More than Don knows. But I reckon Lee is almost certainly not one of them. Dead. In prison. Moved on. Seven years is long enough to have flushed him out of Mum’s life.
Don looks seriously at me. ‘Because it’s never simple, Blake.’
‘There’s no choice.’ I lay it on the line for him. ‘I’m going after Jane. I’m not going to let whatever the truth is get away fr
om me. To do that, I have to get my passport. I don’t want to go back there, Don. It’s the last place I want to go. But I have to. Don’t you see that?’
Don nods. ‘I see it.’ He sighs. ‘Who are you really doing this for, Blake? Don’t say Andrew Glasson, because I won’t believe you. And don’t say Jane Glasson either. If she’s living in Switzerland under a false name, working for Harkness Pharmaceuticals, it’s because she wants to.’
‘It’s about more than Jane.’
‘What, then?’
‘Not sure.’ It’s true. I’m not. Turning the Glassons back into a family can’t turn my family into any less of a disaster zone. But I let Lee destroy Daisy and then I ran away. I’m not going to run away from this. There’s something big behind the game Harkness is playing. He wants me to take the money from Ingrid and go round the world. Why? What’s he afraid I’ll find out if I don’t? That’s the question I’m really set on answering. ‘I can’t let this go now, Don. I’ve come too far to turn back. All I need to know is: are you going to come with me?’
But I know already. I can see it in his face.
They left as the rush hour was fizzling out. The early evening was grey, with drifts of drizzle, the light flat. There were questions – lots of them – Don wanted to ask Blake about her family. But he knew her well enough by now not to ask them. She had been a fugitive for seven years. And now they were going to the very place she had fled from. Every time he glanced at her, he saw the tension in her jaw. And every time she glanced at him, he sensed she was grateful to him – but would never say so.
They drove into the outer suburbs of Birmingham from the south. Blake’s plan was that Don would confirm her mother was drinking the evening away in the Highwayman before Blake went to the house. This required her to describe her mother, which she did with obvious reluctance – and even more obvious distaste.
‘Squat, barrel-chested, with dyed blonde hair. Normally wears a hoodie, leggings and trainers. Too old for the style and looks it. Chews gum even when she’s drinking. Red-faced and fish-eyed.’ Blake shuddered. ‘That’s the photofit of the woman who always claimed I was her daughter.’
Don could think of little to say in response to that. In the end, all he came up with was, ‘Sorry.’
‘Not your fault, Don. You can’t choose your parents, right?’
‘Your father—’
‘Died when I was nine years old. Hit and run on his way home from work on his bike. In case you’re wondering, I totally adored him.’
‘You’ve not had a lot of luck, have you?’
‘Life sucks, Don. No one ever tell you that?’
The Highwayman was a faded Tudor-style roadhouse, sporting posters advertising Sunday barbecues and forthcoming Sky Sports spectaculars. There were tables outside on the wide pavement, facing a busy junction, where the smokers were sitting. They looked a forbidding bunch of beer-bellied men and woebegone women. A couple of large dogs were snarling at each other by one table, barely restrained by their owners. Even viewed from a side-street on the far side of the junction, where Don had parked, the place looked a long way from enticing.
The part he had to play in Blake’s plan required him to go in and order a drink while checking for the presence of her mother, so there was nothing to be gained by quibbling about the clientele. Blake’s face was obscured by a large tweed cap Don had dug out of a cupboard, which for some reason made her look ridiculously young. She was sitting as low in her seat as she could and was very obviously ill at ease.
‘As soon as you’re sure she’s there, come out and signal to me. I’ll walk to the house from here.’
‘Where is the house, exactly?’
‘The next street over. There’s an alley I can cut through by the next lamppost but one.’
‘OK. All set, then?’
‘I am.’
Don sighed. ‘Me too.’
He climbed out of the car and made a slow approach to the Highwayman, dutifully waiting for the green man before crossing the junction. He was anonymously dressed in jeans and fleece, but somehow did not feel anonymous. The difference between him and the men sitting outside the pub was a gulf between two tribes. They registered that with the merest glance in his direction.
Inside was no better: crowded, hot and noisy. The pub was a barn of a place, with a U-shaped bar in the centre. A giant-screen television was playing highlights of a football match. Don drifted watchfully through the cluster of drinkers, some sitting, some standing, until he found himself eye to eye with one of the barmen. He ordered a pint and did a lot of looking around while it dribbled unappealingly out of a gigantic pump.
Suddenly, he saw her: the woman Blake had described so memorably. The brittle, dyed blonde hair, the clothes, the face, the gum-chewing between slurps of what he guessed was Bacardi and Coke: it had to be her. He would have put her age at fifty, but suspected she was actually younger. She was with four other women of similar age and appearance. They were doing a lot of cackling and coughing. Whether they were actually enjoying themselves was hard to tell. Don felt the weight of their desperation beneath the heavy make-up and the hard voices.
He should have looked away as soon as he had satisfied himself the woman was Blake’s mother. As it was, he let his gaze linger a moment too long. She caught his eye. And smiled at him.
He turned away instantly, downed some of his beer and plotted a course to the door. Before he could leave the bar, however, she was standing next to him, hoodie open over a low-necked T-shirt, breasts very nearly spilling out of it. A heart with an arrow through it, distorted by the bulge of her flesh, was tattooed low on one of her breasts, nearly buried in the faintly crinkled cleavage.
‘’Ullo, darlin’,’ she said. ‘Come lookin’ for fun, ’ave you?’
Don was briefly lost for words. Identifying Blake’s mother was one thing, flirting with her, or she with him, was quite another. ‘I, er …’
‘You’re not from round ’ere, are you?’
‘Er, no.’
‘I’m Bren. Wot’s your name?’
‘Don.’ He cursed himself for not making something up.
‘Pleased to meet you, Don.’ She rattled the ice cubes in her glass, which he noticed then was nearly empty. ‘You look like the kind o’ guy who’d buy a girl a drink if she needed one. And I do need one.’
‘You do?’
‘Oh yeah.’ She waggled the glass at the barman, who immediately started pouring her another. ‘I’m always better after I’ve ’ad a few.’
The Bacardi and Coke was plonked down in front of her. The barman eyed Don expectantly as he stated the price. There seemed nothing for it but to pay. ‘Ta,’ the barman said mechanically.
‘Cheers.’ Bren clinked her glass against Don’s and downed a slug. Then she leered at him. ‘’Spect you’re wonderin’ wot it makes me better at, ain’t you?’
‘Er, not really.’
‘No need to be shy. You didn’t come in ’ere lookin’ for a quiet drink, did you?’
‘Maybe I did.’ Don smiled awkwardly. ‘You never know. Matter of fact, I think I’ll step outside. It’s a bit, er, crowded in here.’
‘Yeah. I’ll come with you. I could do with a fag.’
Don headed for the exit, with Bren in tow. There was no obvious way to shake her off and he supposed Blake could be in no doubt where her mother was if she actually saw her. He noticed Bren wink at her friends as she left and tried not to wonder what the wink implied.
Don glanced towards the distant MG as they emerged into the gun-grey evening. The windscreen was a reflection of the sky. He could not see Blake, which he reckoned a mercy. He stepped to one side as he left the doorway, manoeuvring Bren so she faced away from the car.
‘Got any fags?’
‘No. I, er … gave up.’
‘Want one of mine?’ She pulled a pack of Regals and a plastic lighter out of the pocket of her hoodie.
‘No thanks. Like I say, I, er …’
‘Givin’ up
can be bad for you.’ Bren lit a cigarette for herself and more or less obliged him to accept one. He looked past her as he took it and saw Blake climb out of the MG, glance once in his direction, then hurry away along the street until she turned into the alley she had pointed out earlier and vanished from sight.
‘Depends what you’re giving up,’ Don said, taking his first drag.
‘Wot you got in mind?’ The clearer light showed the lines and crevices on Bren’s face and neck. Her skin was blotchy, her hands prematurely gnarled. Don looked for something – anything – to remind him of her daughter and saw only a ghost of similarity in her eyes. ‘You can tell me.’
‘There’s, er, nothing to tell.’ Don was aware he really should have been capable of managing the conversation better. He was out of his depth. And this woman knew it.
‘Wot you do for a livin’, Don?’
‘I’m, er … an estate agent.’
‘Oh yeah? Lots of nice fat commissions, I bet.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘You can spend it on me if you like.’ She gave him a look he suspected was meant to appear coquettish. ‘Wanna come back to my place?’ She gestured with her cigarette. ‘It’s only just round the corner.’
‘I’m fine here, thanks.’
‘I could give you a really sexy time.’
‘What?’
She smiled at him. ‘For the right price, it’s no ’oles barred.’ Don felt suddenly sick. ‘Know what I mean?’
I head along the alley, telling myself not to waste my time wondering what the fuck Don’s playing at – or what Mum might be saying to him. I never wanted to see her again. And I never wanted Don to see her at all. But what the hell, I need that passport.
I reach the street. There’s the house. It looks like all the others. But there’s a difference. It’s the one I grew up in. It’s the one I spent years planning to escape from. I so don’t want to be here.
The street’s empty, bar a couple of kids on chopper bikes most of the way down towards the bend. They’re too young to know who I am. And those who aren’t too young probably wouldn’t recognize me at a glance. This is my chance. I have to grab it.
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