It Was You

by It Was You (retail) (epub)

  Mike’s hand went to a copy of the Standard sitting on the bench beside him. He held it out to me, so that I could see the front page. He asked me if I’d seen it and I nodded.

  ‘They kept at me, Billy,’ he said. His voice was quiet, amazed. ‘They drugged me and then they kept at me, in the hospital, at some police station. They said things about Ally. That friend of yours, the copper. They pushed me down even further than I was.’

  ‘Mike…’

  ‘Then they showed me a tape. It was of myself, outside the Lindauer Building. Gold. He made me look at a tape of myself. I’d just left Ally in the cafe, I was on my way to meet you, and Nicky. The cameras picked me up walking out onto the forecourt. To the van. They stopped it and then they pointed to the bag I was carrying. In my hand. The bag. Do you know what they asked me?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘They asked me if my little baby was inside it. In the bag. If I was carrying my own baby. They asked me that.’

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘And then they let me go. This morning. Hoped I’d understand, they had to ask me certain things…bollocks. I didn’t listen. I was beyond them. I just wanted to see you. I called you but you weren’t at home and I didn’t have your mobile number. It was on my phone and they wouldn’t give it me back. So I came here to find you. When you weren’t in I went home, but I couldn’t stay there, not for ten seconds. It smells of her, Billy. I just grabbed your keys, your spare keys. You still weren’t home when I got back here so I decided to let myself in. I knew you wouldn’t mind because you were my friend. It was the only place I could stand to be because I knew you’d help me. It was what had been getting me through. For two days, with what I was feeling, while they were on at me hour after hour, asking me, I focused on that, I grabbed hold of it, knowing that whatever those stupid, useless bastards were saying you’d be strong. I knew that Billy Rucker would be out there looking for the person who killed my wife. You, at least, would be out there.’

  ‘I was. And I will…’

  ‘I was going to wait for you. I knew you’d be back eventually. I figured you were after them, you know. Like a cowboy, riding around. And then I saw what you’d written on your wall. Her name. And my name. And nothing else. And when I realized what that meant I was sick. I was physically sick, Billy, on your floor. And I ran out of there and I’ve been waiting for you.’

  ‘Mike.’

  ‘Because I wanted to tell you what I think of you. That this is the last time I’ll ever see you. Because you’re weak, Billy. And you’re just like them. Because you thought it was me, you thought I’d done that to Ally. You saw what someone had done to her and you thought it could have been me. You saw. You thought it could have been me.’

  Mike stood up from me. I tried to speak but I couldn’t. My stomach and my chest were contracting. The way he stood I thought he was going to hit me and I wanted him to. Without speaking I begged him to. But he didn’t. I tried to reach out to him but I couldn’t move and I couldn’t see anything through the sheets of tears. I tried to force the word sorry out of my mouth but I was paralysed. I looked round for Mike but I couldn’t see him. The world was a blur, it was one swirling mess. The only thing I was aware of was footsteps disappearing into traffic.

  Chapter Nineteen

  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.

  Chapter Twenty

  The terminal was like a moving maze, with trolleys instead of hedges. The place was rammed. I was early, especially as the arrivals board told me that flight BA 97 was slated to come in twenty minutes late. I made my way to a coffee bar near arrivals and managed to find a seat at a small round table. I took out a notebook and pen and looked at the notes I’d made on the Heathrow Express. I’d taken the train instead of my car so that I could do that. And take less than three hours to get there.

  There was no way I was going to miss Sharon. I know she would have understood if I hadn’t gone but I wanted to see her, to spend every second I could with her. The gesture too was important but there was something else as well. I didn’t want her to see a newspaper. I didn’t want her doing that on her own.

  I did feel guilty, though. What would Mike have thought: instead of finding out what had happened to Ally I’d gone to meet Sharon, my girlfriend? The girl I still had. For this reason I took my daybook and my phone, calling Andy from the train just after nine. This time he did pick up, saying, ‘Just a minute,’ before walking into a different room. I was relieved. Andy told me that the car from the tunnel had been traced. It was a Mondeo, four years old. Though the kid had found it in Lewisham it had originally been taken from a street in Bethnal Green last week. I asked him about the girl in the boot and he said they’d found a possible print match but were waiting for it to come back with an ID. She’d been about six months pregnant but no one with any link to the Lindauer seemed to be missing. Andy told me that he wanted to speak to Mike again, to go through CCTV stills, which were being pulled off the tape, and he asked me if I’d seen him. I told him that I hadn’t.

  I thought about what Andy had said about the car, but I couldn’t really focus on it. All I could think about was Sharon. As Andy had reminded me at the station the other night, Sharon was my brother Luke’s girlfriend when I first met her. Luke had served her in the bar where he was working and fell in love with her right there. They were planning to marry when Luke had the accident that left, and leaves, him in a PVS. A coma. Sharon and I had been almost inseparable after that, the only people who seemed to have any relevance to each other. We’d been friends for nearly four years before it had gone any further and we’d fallen in love ourselves. It was an amazing, wrenching time, but I thought we’d managed to deal with all the guilt and the weirdness of it. I thought we’d last for ever. Sharon had thought that too, but after a year and a half she realized that she couldn’t do it any more, she couldn’t stand to be reminded daily about what had happened. I saw her again, sitting on my futon, and felt my stomach plummeting down through me at the words she’d said.

  ‘I’m seeing someone else, Billy.’

  I hadn’t seen it coming and the pain, and betrayal, took me months to come to terms with. I had a brief relationship and some meaningless encounters and managed to function, though I couldn’t stop my mind turning towards Sharon. I heard she’d dumped the guy she’d got together with and I thought about calling her on several occasions but I never quite did. More than a year later, out of the blue, she
called me. I was instantly defensive and I asked her what she wanted. She told me that she was going away to work and wanted to know if I fancied dinner before she left. That was all. Actually, she laughed, she wanted to know if I fancied cooking it for her.

  ‘Those lamb shanks,’ she said, ‘in white wine. I can never get them the same as you do them.’

  I must have spent three hours cooking that night but I needn’t have bothered. We’d been so nervous we’d hardly been able to eat. Eventually we gave up and without saying much just walked into the bedroom. We made love in a kind of sickened, terrified daze, just wanting to get it done. To get past it. In the morning I couldn’t believe she was there. Sharon and I spent every night together after that until she left for Afghanistan. Only nine days, but I knew. I’d imagined the nerves I’d feel seeing her again, but they were nothing compared to what I was feeling now.

  I sipped an espresso but instantly regretted it, the caffeine soon playing chase with the adrenalin in my veins. I was weak, my throat dry at the thought of seeing Sharon. There was a different fear in my head now. Not that she’d met someone else, but that it might go wrong again. If, like last time, she couldn’t handle seeing her ex-lover in the face of his brother every day. I wasn’t sure I could deal with losing her again. I told myself to calm down and not crowd her. I’d put off asking Sharon to move in. I’d be a little cool, let her drive it forward if she wanted to. The news I had to give her would blow it all away anyway.

  BA 97 – Landed.

  It was ten forty-five. The airport was even busier now if that was possible, waves of bodies moving out of the arrivals’ hall, riptides of single people cutting against them. I tapped my feet and turned to my notebook, knowing that Landed could mean another thirty minutes. I tried to concentrate on the list I’d made. The bus driver, the one who’d driven Josephine. The police would have spoken to him at least twice but it wouldn’t hurt if I gave it a shot. I wrote a list of questions for him but my eyes kept flicking from the page to the screen up above me.