SuperJack

by Adam Baron

  Shulpa had her hands in the pockets of the Prada blazer she was wearing. She was sitting up very straight. Her face was expressionless. Draper looked from me to Shulpa, then back to me again.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he said. ‘This isn’t what you think. I’ve known Shulpa years and she just offered—’

  ‘You don’t have to lie to him, Jack,’ Shulpa said. ‘He won’t mind. He’s not really into me anyway. Jack’s right, Billy, we have known each other a long time. For ever, really. And there wasn’t anything going on between us for ages, but there is now. It just happened. I’m sorry.’

  Draper looked confused. He ran both of his hands back over his head, looking like he was expecting to find more hair there. He was worried I was going to hit him. ‘I shouldn’t have come here,’ he explained. ‘I shouldn’t have dragged Shulpa into this. I didn’t know where else to go. She said the police hadn’t bothered her about me and told me to come over. I didn’t expect anything other than a place to kip. I… Jesus.’

  Shulpa was looking up at me, still very calm. Her head nodded, almost imperceptibly. ‘I should have told you, Billy. That he was here. I just didn’t know what you’d do. I really wanted to help Jack – I know he’s innocent – and I didn’t know how you’d react. I’m sorry. As for me and Jack, how we feel. I know you and I have had fun but you don’t really mind, do you?’

  No, I don’t mind. Not in the way you think. Behind me, the lift began again. Coming up. I reached behind me and pushed the door to, hearing the Yale click.

  ‘You mentioned Korai,’ Jack said. ‘So you reckon…?’

  ‘Which airport were you thinking of going to?’ I said.

  Both Shulpa and Jack stared back at me. They were frozen, like Sharon was in the Soane Museum. They looked like they’d stay that way for ever. ‘I would suggest an internal European flight for which you won’t need passports. No, better still the car ferry or the Eurostar, where you can just drive through and hope they don’t spot you. Then buy a false passport someplace, it isn’t hard, and fly out of the EC from somewhere Jack isn’t known. Portugal maybe, or Turkey where the controls are useless. Somewhere like that. You are leaving, aren’t you?’ I looked at the empty hangers on the rail beneath the window and my eyes skirted round the room until I saw the end of a suitcase, pushed beneath the bed Shulpa was sitting on. I nodded, my eyes turning to her. ‘What did Cat Stevens say? I hope you find nice clothes to wear? So, which is it, ferry or airport? Have you told your wife, Jack?’

  At the mention of Draper’s wife, his face changed. The pain on it was mixed with confusion and helplessness. I wasn’t giving him a hard time but he felt he had to justify himself.

  ‘They know it’s me!’ Jack said. ‘They know it. I’ve got to skip. It wasn’t me but there’s no way out, not now, the police have found some sort of print…’

  ‘Nicky just tell you that, did he?’

  Jack stopped, and nodded. I turned to the girl on the bed. I hadn’t told Shulpa about it because I didn’t want Jack skipping before now, which he would have done as soon as he knew it was hopeless. I’d known Nicky would tell him.

  ‘That why you wanted to spend some time together?’ I asked Shulpa. ‘So you could pump me for news on how things stand for Jack?’ Shulpa didn’t nod. She just looked at me. I shrugged. ‘You could have just asked. I’d have told you. So, you’re leaving, Jack? Leaving everything. I can understand why. You’d be in the nick anyway so you wouldn’t get to see Louise or Tommy. She wouldn’t wait for you and by the time you got out he’d be a young man. A stranger. He’s fine, by the way. So yes, you’re fucked, it’s true. But to tell you the truth I can’t be bothered with all this protestations of innocence crap. Not any more. You must have done it, McKenna at least. There’s no other way round it, is there? Well, is there?’

  Again Jack’s hands tried to delve into hair that wasn’t there. He started to pace. He looked like a man in a straitjacket. I could see his knowledge of his own innocence begin to wane. Did I do it? Maybe I did? I must have? Everyone thinks so, they found my prints…

  ‘You know I walked in on her?’ I said.

  Draper knew instantly what I was talking about and he stopped in his tiny tracks. He turned to me, stunned. His eyes shivered. He stood with his mouth open, waiting for me.

  ‘I saw her too, Jack, just after you did. Can you see it? Can you see her? The look in her eye, the shock, the surprise, all laced with terror. Well?’

  Draper didn’t answer. I was looking straight into his eyes at me, at Shulpa.

  ‘Did you imagine what it must have been like for her? When it happened. Yes? I did too. I kept trying to imagine how she struggled, how shocked she must have been when it started, then what she felt when she knew it was over, that she couldn’t stop it. What must that have been like? And that knife, Jack, can you see it, in her face just standing there, can you?’

  ‘I didn’t do it. Please. I’d do anything. I didn’t. She looked… I never would have done that to her.’

  Draper had slowly sunk to the sofa where he was sitting, his head in his hands, shaking like there were a hundred funnel webs scurrying over his body.

  ‘It’s too late, Jack. You can say what you like.’ There was a phone up against the wall by the kitchenette and I walked over to it. I picked up the receiver. ‘I’m going to call the police. I didn’t think it was you either until this piece of glass. I thought it was Korai, I even thought her mother had done it out of some religious zeal. But it wasn’t them. I’m sorry, Jack.’

  ‘Put the phone down, Billy.’

  Shulpa had taken her right hand out of her jacket pocket. She was holding it in front of her, towards me. In it was a small, shiny silver gun, barely bigger than one of those cigarette lighters. But it wasn’t a toy. I set the phone back very gently. I kept my eyes on my former girlfriend. I say former, we hadn’t officially split up. Somehow, though, I didn’t think we’d be able to get past Shulpa having both slept with her former lover and pulled a gun on me. The two murders, maybe we could have lived with them, but I thought actually that it was probably better just to let things go. We just drifted apart really, oh and she threatened to shoot me. Plenty more fish in the sea. Jack, who hadn’t been watching Shulpa, saw the way I was standing. When he turned to look at her his mouth opened.

  ‘Shulpa…’

  ‘Don’t worry, Jack. It’s okay. You didn’t kill those people, you’re not a murderer. I believe you even if he doesn’t. If no one does. You’re not going to prison. Billy’s right, we’re leaving. He isn’t going to stop us.’ Jack didn’t know which way to turn. He held his hands up. ‘Shulpa, relax okay. Listen. This is making it worse for me. Why don’t we all calm down? Fuck, where did you get that thing? It’s okay, Billy, she won’t use it. She just cares about me…’

  ‘Oh, she’ll use it all right.’ I had my palms stretched even though she hadn’t told me to; the innate etiquette of the aimed-at. My eyes turned to Jack. ‘She won’t have any qualms using that. Not her, no. She doesn’t have any qualms at all about killing people.’

  Jack slowly froze again as he looked at me. He knew what I was saying. What I was beginning to say. Shulpa knew it too. Her hand trembled. She brought her left hand up to steady the butt of the little automatic.

  I ignored it and looked at Draper. ‘What did you feel for Alison Everly, Jack?’

  He was surprised. He shook his head. ‘Christ, nothing, I liked her, she was really sweet. But it was just sex…’

  ‘You wouldn’t have left your wife?’

  He shook his head. ‘God, no…’

  ‘But when you started seeing Louise it was just sex too, wasn’t it?’

  Draper looked ashamed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then you fell in love with her. Shulpa, that must have really hurt you. Christ. You were practically engaged. You loved him so much, didn’t you? He was everything, especially after your parents split. You’d do anything for him.’ I gave a laugh. ‘Jesus, he even managed to turn you on to birdwat
ching.’

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘I saw the books in your house, Jack, and the binoculars. Nicky said your dad never took you, Shulpa. Your dad told me the same thing. Your mum told me what you were like after Jack left. Jack was everything to you, wasn’t he? He still is. Did you kill Alison as part of this plan, to make Jack leave with you, or was it just rage, from hating her. Did the plan come after? Which way round was it? Well?’

  The two people in front of me had very different expressions. Both had gone ashen, but only one was looking at me with pure, white, gut-deep hatred.

  ‘I thought it was me who was trying to forget someone, not you. I should have known. You were trying to fuck yourself into loving me, into forgetting Jack. From the moment we met. You know it’s bad for you, don’t you, that feeling you get when you think of him? You know it makes you want to do things? Even this afternoon, you were trying not to love him. Weren’t you? At least you have tried over the years. But it didn’t work, did it, it never ever worked.’

  ‘It never came close. But don’t you tell me that. I knew it was her you wanted. All the time. I found the pictures of her. Prissy bitch. I knew you were thinking of her when you were having sex with me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought of her while I was so much as touching you,’ I said. ‘But come on, tell me. Why did you kill her? Was there a reason you can say, or did it just happen, happen when you realized that not only did Jack not want you for his wife, he didn’t even want you on the side. He’d rather bang a sad Page Three girl who just needed the money because her mother was ill, who needed to do it but didn’t even want to.’

  Shulpa’s hands were both shaking now. ‘You thought he’d be suspected of killing Alison and then he’d leave with you. But he didn’t. He thought he’d get round it, he could beat it. So you killed his agent as well, to add to the pressure on him. You shouldn’t have used a glass from Nicky’s bar,’ I said. ‘I recognized it, that little tinge of blue. It was different from McKenna’s glasses. The piece even had a couple of letters of the brand name on it. You took it from Nicky’s after being there with Jack one night, didn’t you? You came to London for him. You’d probably propositioned him, and he’d turned you down. What was it, Jack, did the way she look at you freak you out? You sent letters to Louise, the one who’d taken him from you. You did that thing with a cat. You were following him, stalking I think they say. But if you’d killed Louise you would have been a suspect right off. So you thought you’d land Jack in it, so that the only out he had was you, someone with enough money to get away somewhere with. Someone who loved him enough to put herself on the line for him.’

  The more I spoke the more alone Shulpa seemed. I was reminded of Louise Draper, on her sofa like Alison. Draper’s whole body was moving away from her, without him even realizing. He looked like he’d had a stroke. Shulpa's eyes were bolted on to me, tears running down her cheeks in two continuous streams.

  ‘Is…is he right? Is what he is saying true? Did you frame me? Is this all because of you?’

  ‘I loved you.’ Shulpa turned to him. ‘I…love you. You don’t know. No one knows. I’m normal. I’m not bad. Why did you want her? You could have come to me. That slag. I saw you with her. I saw you. I was going to send pictures to your wife of her and then I thought no, you still won’t want me. So I tried to make you need me. I’m not bad, I’m in love. If you loved someone like this you’d know…’ She turned to me. ‘Why did you have to get in the way? There wouldn’t have been any more…deaths. We’d have been happy. We could have gone to Pakistan, we have friends there. We would have gone for ever. Why did you have to do this to me, Billy?’

  It wasn’t just the change in her eyes as she finally saw it all slipping away. I’d seen her arm beginning to tense. Thinking back on it I have Sal to thank, as I have for a lot of things. The speed work that was aimed at making me faster sliding a hook from my friend Des: the rope, the hoops, the step. Six months of it had left its mark. I fell to the left as her finger closed. The gun snapped like a Christmas cracker and the wall behind my head spat as I hit the floor. I jumped to my left as the gun snapped again. I heard them trying to get in the door. I looked up to see the gun again, pointing straight at me. I seemed to be looking at it for hours. But Draper was on her before she could fire. He got her arm down but she bucked with her whole body and brought it up again. Draper threw himself on her. They fell off the side of the bed, struggling, a mess of legs and arms. The door burst open. As the officers rushed into the room I heard the little gun, muffled now, say pop again and then again.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I didn’t enjoy playing Nicky off against himself, against his friend, against his sister. I didn’t enjoy anything about my acquaintance with Jack Draper. One thing I really didn’t enjoy was the conclusions I’ve had to make about myself.

  I think I’ve discovered that I’m a jealous man. A suspicious man. Nicky says that in the past, before I met Shulpa, he’d often mentioned that his sister used to go out with Jack Draper. He tells me that he spoke about it on numerous occasions but I don’t really remember this. Possibly, not having met her or knowing I’d be involved with Shulpa, I didn’t take it in. But when I met Draper I knew it, without admitting to myself that it was affecting the way I felt about him. I was instantly wary of Draper and from then on I was wary of her. It was probably because I could never understand why Shulpa hung out with me when she was the girl she was, and here was this hip famous dude who had everything I assumed she would have wanted. It wasn’t as simple as that, though. I’d underestimated my girlfriend. Shulpa didn’t want a man like Draper, she didn’t want what he stood for, all the things he was that I wasn’t. She just wanted Draper himself.

  The jealousy I felt for him meant that I soon started asking myself questions, though. Draper had started playing in London and she had come there too. The way she’d gone into my office, obviously looking to see if she could find anything. There was a look in her eye sometimes that told me she had lost something, she would never be happy until she found it again. I’ve realized that I must be a jealous and suspicious man because it wasn’t long after Alison Everly’s death that the strange thought that Shulpa had been involved in it had come to me.

  I pushed the idea aside, proof only of my own paranoia, and I pushed it aside again. I’d gone off to visit Alison’s parents, I’d chipped away at the thought that Korai was involved, all so that I wouldn’t have to see what was in front of my face. It was only when I realized that it was Shulpa who had taken the money from under the floorboards of the Old Ludensian that I knew what had happened. Then, I had to accept it. She’d taken the money before killing Alison. She’d needed it to lure Jack away, so that she would be his only escape route. Then, when she had it, just over two hundred thousand pounds, she set about making him need her.

  But knowing it was Shulpa didn’t help Nicky. Even if I was sure that it was she who had stolen from him, I still had to get the Ameli crew off Nicky’s back. As they’d told us, if Nicky had lost it, what was that to do with them? I tried to get Shulpa to give the money back, by assuring her that Nicky would die if I didn’t find it, but she’d refused to believe that they would kill him. She wouldn’t face it. She couldn’t accept that she, in fact, was killing him. Either that or she didn’t care. Other than getting Shulpa to hand the cash over the best way I could think of was to accuse one of their own of doing it. Christopher Ameli gladly stepped into the frame. The rest of the stuff I said about him was true and I figured he could take this on his shoulders too. Protesting his innocence of the matter wouldn’t have cut any ice, not after what I’d told them. Even if Miriam Ameli wasn’t absolutely sure, she would have found enough money in her nephew’s secret stash to more than compensate her.

  When I went to see Sally at the George, two days later, to pay her back the money Nicky owed, I told her what had happened. Sally told me that Christopher Ameli had disappeared.

  ‘Back to Malta?’
I asked her.

  ‘There or somewhere a little further away,’ Sal had replied, with a shrug.

  Even though I knew Shulpa had had ample opportunity and motive to lift the cash from Nicky, it still amazed me that she’d do that to her brother. I couldn’t be absolutely sure it was her until I found it. I thought it would be in her flat, in her travel bags even, and I assumed that the police would come across it. But they didn’t. Nor did they find any safety deposit keys on the premises. I was glad. How would it have made Nicky feel? I let it slip to the back of my mind, knowing that it wasn’t important, not really. What was important was that my friend was off the hook that he’d thrown himself on. That and the fact that his sister had been found out to be a murderer and had been shot, twice. That she was critically ill. I was more than happy to let its whereabouts remain a mystery.

  The days following were hard for me but harder for Nicky. His relief turned to horror when I phoned him and told him what had happened, that Shulpa was in an ambulance on the way to A and E. I met him there. I didn’t tell him that Shulpa had taken his money but the fact that she was a double murderer was a big enough blow. At first he refused to believe it and he wanted to know why I’d begun to suspect her. I should have just said jealousy but I told him little things. The birdwatching – I’d seen binoculars and field guides in Jack’s house. Her father confirmed that he never took her and his mother told me that Jack did. The fact that she lied about it for no reason made me think. When I found Jack in his uncle’s warehouse I’d smelled something, something familiar. I didn’t want to know it was Shulpa’s perfume but I had to face up to it. The paperback that was sitting on Draper’s bed was the same one Shulpa had been reading in my office that night. Then, when I’d recognized the glass fragment as coming from the Ludensian, I realized that Shulpa wasn’t just in contact with Jack, helping him out. She was right in the middle of it. In Leicester I’d found a box in Shulpa’s bedroom with her old diary. The intensity of her feelings for Jack was obvious, as was her rage when he left her. I already knew by then but it cemented the reality, made me see why doing what she had had seemed logical to Shulpa.