There was a lock-in but I put both drinks down quickly enough anyway, ordering more, emptying my head as I filled my mouth. The pub was half full, as decrepit as I remembered. Foam fought its way out of twenty-year-old upholstery and the thin, green-paisley carpet was matted with fag ash and beer. A drunk by the jukebox was playing the same Tom Jones song again and again. I was sitting at the bar next to three builders. I don’t know how long I stayed there, the noise around me was just noise. The Guinness was thin and ferrous and so I emptied the whiskey right into it. Then a man’s voice stood out from it, one of the builders. He was telling the joke, the same joke that I’d heard on the tube that morning. But he never got to the end of it. He was heading backwards by then, his nose closer to the back of his head than was usual. His colleagues objected and I laid one of them out too before someone managed to get me in a bear hug. It was the landlord and when the first guy was up, and then the second, the four of them managed to get me outside. I thought that might be it but instead they got me back behind some wheely bins, the landlord being the most enthusiastic. I covered up as best as I could but I didn’t try to stop them. I laughed through most of it.
* * *
The phone woke me, which meant that I was at home. The digits on my alarm clock told me it was just after nine. When I reached out to silence the ringing a sharp, barbed spike jabbed into my ribs. It was followed by a sticky pulling, as if all the muscles in the side of my chest had been Velcro’d to my ribcage. I winced, instantly remembering everything that had happened. The canal, the soft, comforting glow behind Sharon’s window. Everything up until I was dragged out of the pub. After that it was a blank. I couldn’t remember how I’d got back, or got undressed, how I’d got into bed. I was just glad I had. The phone was still ploughing a furrow through my skull. I pulled my cheek from the pillow it was stuck to and shuffled closer to it, so that I wouldn’t have to hold my hand out very far. I hesitated before picking it up, knowing that as soon as I did my life would begin again.
I thought it might be Sharon and I was braced for what she’d say to me. But it was Andy. He asked me if I was awake and I said I was, just. In a hurried voice, he told me that the girl in Loughborough Junction hadn’t been found yet and I nodded to myself. She must have been in hiding and me looking for her would probably have been fruitless too. Sal was right. Andy did say, however, that he had located the flat Denise Denton had been using before her death. It was a squat, in a derelict block near to the corner she’d been working. I asked him about the CCTV stills. They’d be ready by ten. I said I’d be down there, which meant I’d have forty minutes in the bath.
‘One more thing,’ Andy said.
‘Go on.’
‘The husband. In Birmingham.’
‘Jared?’
‘We picked him up.’
‘Good.’
‘But not in Birmingham. Here, wandering around Euston station. Trains to Birmingham leave from there.’
‘I know. Did you tell him?’
‘Someone else did. I’m about to grill him. Tell me, what was he like?’
I shrugged. It hurt. ‘I don’t know. He missed his wife, seemed pretty cut up.’
‘Not as bad as she was.’
‘For fucksake. Anyway, you don’t think he’s got anything to do with it?’
‘Why not? He’s connected to his wife obviously but he was in the Lindauer. He came to see you. So he’s connected to Ally and the Thomas girl too. All three. Left his job, apparently without saying a word.’
‘Come on! Why? Why do this? I’d never met him before he walked into my office, I’ve got no link to him at all.’
‘Not that you know of. We’ll be checking that but think about it, OK?’
‘I’ll think about it. Ten then?’
‘Ten,’ Andy said.
I put the phone down and looked at it. I picked it up again and dialled Sharon’s number, swearing when her voicemail picked up. I left it a long time, trying to think what to say, some way of explaining my feelings as I’d stood on the bridge last night. I couldn’t do it, not to a machine. I’d have to speak to her in person, call her later. I tried to imagine what she’d felt last night, waiting for me, realizing finally that I wasn’t going to show. Had she looked out of the window and seen me there? I doubted it but I didn’t really know. I hung up.
In the bathroom I yawned and stretched gingerly, seeing how far my body would move. I’d hoped to be at the station before now but I needed to get myself together. I thought about Andy’s suspicions. I couldn’t imagine there was anything in them, though. The machine, just going through all the possibilities, leaving nothing out. I spun the hot tap and then looked in the mirror. I wasn’t feeling as bad as I should have. My left cheek was grazed, embedded with grit, but that was all. I cleaned it with cotton wool and Dettol, ending up looking like a Duran Duran fan who’d forgotten half of his blusher. Then I headed downstairs to get a pint of milk while the bath ran. That’s when I saw it. It was sitting on the doormat, at the foot of the stairs. A plain, white, letter-sized envelope with a handwritten address.
I saw the letter but I didn’t pick it up until I came back in with the milk. I don’t get much mail at home other than utility bills. The rest goes to my office, gives me an incentive to get out of bed and go there in the morning. I grabbed it and hopped back up the stairs and saw that it had a London postmark. I tossed it onto the side, intending to ignore it, but when I reached for the kettle I stopped and picked it up again. The entire address was written in very deliberate block capitals. Who writes a whole address in capitals? Not just the town or the postcode? I turned the envelope over. There was nothing on the back. I stuck a finger beneath the flap and jagged it all the way along. Inside was a folded rectangle of shiny, coloured paper. A page clipped out of a London A-Z.
I held the page in my hand and frowned. I searched for some kind of note but there was nothing else in the envelope. Tossing the envelope aside, I opened the page out and saw an area of London stretching east to west from Queensway to Shepherd’s Bush. I frowned again. I looked at it for a few seconds but it didn’t tell me anything, other than the fact that the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens was more of an oval. I turned over, expecting another page of London streets, but my eye went straight to the arrow. There was an arrow stretching from the very edge of the map to the centre, an arrow, ruler-drawn, in blue biro. It looked like a party invite but there was no indication as to whose party it was. And wouldn’t they have photocopied it anyway? I was irritated, about to shrug whatever it was aside, when my ribcage suddenly seemed to contract. The breath I was taking stopped in my throat as though a vice had tightened round my windpipe.
The arrow was pointing to the Westway. No, not the Westway, not the flyover itself. It was pointing just beneath it. To the exact spot where my career had ended seven-and-a-half years ago. Where everything in my life had flipped, been turned on its head, come crashing straight down.
Chapter Twenty-Six
When I’d jogged down into the Rotherhithe Tunnel to find Andy Gold two days ago images of a different wreck had come to me and I had pushed them aside. I couldn’t do that now. I drove fast towards the Westway but my mind was already there.
A wet night, a low ceiling of cloud, the streets almost flooded after a whole day of rain. More of a mist now but still coming down. A car driving east towards the Marylebone Road and then King’s Cross, and Exmouth Market. A car that didn’t get there. My car. But not me driving. The car is speeding, the driver desperate to get where he’s going, but that’s not why it spins. A car transporter veers across in front of it, on purpose, and the car takes off from the kerb of the raised road, mashes the barrier, leaps into space. The car seems to stop in midair, looks like it can fly for a second, but of course it can’t. It flips like a salmon and lands on its roof. Lands on my brother, on his life. The Westway. It was in the papers seven and a half years ago. There were photographs and everything.
Anyone could have seen it.
<
br /> I’ve driven over the Westway many times since then but never been back to the place beneath, where Luke finished up, where I saw him being cut out of my car, thinking he was dead, sometimes wishing in the years since that he had been. The place where I’d turned to see a girl, his fiancée, Sharon Dean, screaming to be let through the barrier to get to him. No, I’ve never been able to drive up there and look at the place where it happened. What would be the point? I see it in my dreams enough as it is.
But now I was going there.
I pulled on some clothes and then spent ten minutes looking for my car keys. They were in the pocket of the jeans I’d worn yesterday. I wondered if I’d have to spend even longer looking for my car but once I was outside I saw it, twenty yards down on the left, one wheel on the pavement. The boys in the van must have seen me put it there. I wondered if they’d thought about boosting me, getting a drink-driving under their belts. They must have thought, he’s lost it, it’s got to him. And they’d have been right. I wondered who was in the van now, whether it was anyone else who knew me.
I took the same route that I’d taken when I got a call on my car radio that told me what had happened to Luke. The feeling was the same too; fear at what I’d find shaken up with intense impatience to get there. Last time I’d known what to expect, though not what the result would be. This time I was in the dark, had no idea what the hell I was heading to. It intensified the frustration, made me curse the traffic even more.
Like last time I tried to avoid the snarl at King’s Cross and I hit the Marylebone Road near Euston. I drove past UCL, where Sharon had gone, past Harley Street, and Baker Street, burning with impatience in a slow Nile of vehicles. As soon as I could I broke off left and then swung back, finally cruising beneath the broad concrete supports that hold up the Westway. I made my way back in the direction I’d come until I’d reached Alfred Road. I stopped. Alfred Road. The sign was in the same place. Exactly. It struck me as amazing, but why should it? What reason would they have had to move it? I hesitated, suddenly wanting to forget this, to ignore the page I’d been sent. Wanting to phone Andy. Or just go home. I did neither. I pushed the car on a little, then parked on a meter at the top of the street. I looked around but I couldn’t see anything. I stepped out.
I shut the door and cast my eyes around some more, ahead and behind me. I could see nothing. The street was just a street. It was quiet. Again, though, this seemed odd. That night it had been manic, like the tunnel had been. Firemen, flashing lights, shouting. My memories hovered above the street as it was now, playing themselves over. I looked through them at the two lines of parked cars, at the Fifties terraced houses that were probably worth a mint now in spite of the endless maw of traffic passing almost directly overhead. I had another memory from that night. It almost made me smile. A thinner, younger Andy Gold pulling me away from the buckled, flattened vehicle Luke was trapped in, telling me to let the firemen do their job.
I was still standing by my car. I turned one more time, again trying to pull my thoughts from that time to this. I looked at the car in front of mine, at others ahead. But still I had no idea what I was looking for, what I was supposed to be doing there. Was this some kind of joke? Or would someone be waiting for me? I didn’t know. I moved my feet forward and walked slowly up the street, keeping my eyes open. I was tense, vigilant. Soon passing the spot where Luke had come down. I didn’t feel anything. Nothing happened, either inside me or out on the road. I let out a breath. In spite of the circumstances I was glad I’d finally come back there. There was no trace, nothing in the air, no vibes left to tell you what had happened. I realized that most of the people living on the street probably didn’t even know, though some would remember. I walked on, putting it out of my mind, asking myself again why the hell I’d been sent there.
I walked right up to the end of the road and then back again, not knowing what to expect. Someone to meet me, contact me in some way? I checked to make sure I had my phone in case they called. But nothing happened. I began to walk up the street again. A postman passed me and I looked at him, obvious expectation on my face. He seemed confused. I turned away.
I looked inside cars and into houses through any windows that weren’t curtained or covered by blinds. I braced whenever a car drove up or down the street, only to see them all go by. I stood in the middle of the road, making it obvious that I was there for anyone who wanted to speak to me. Was this stupid? Was I opening myself up to something? I didn’t know, but I did begin to feel it: that I was missing something. That the reason I’d been sent to the street was right there. In front of me? Behind? Again I scoured the street. The houses were all set three yards back from the road, looking onto small front gardens, most concreted over, a couple with scooters parked. Most neat but a couple overgrown with weeds that the neighbours probably tutted about as they left in the morning. Still nothing. Again: was this some kind of joke? I watched as the postman finished his round and walked off round the corner towards the Edgware Road.
I walked from one end of the street to the other until I’d been there about forty minutes. I was loath to leave but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. And I was late for Andy as it was. What I did was stay visible, leaning against a meter, looking at the lumpy, mottled grey patchwork that subsequent cable-laying companies had made of the road surface. I counted the satellite dishes, averaging them out at about one for every three houses. That particular battle was over. I looked at my watch and tapped my feet, deciding to give it another ten minutes. No more. I wanted to get to the camera stills. I thought about them, what they might show me, and then my mind began to wander in a different direction. I began to slip back again to that other time, the lights of the fire engines hazy through the rain, the rain on Luke’s face, his pale face, how heavy the car looked, such weight to fall down so far on top of him. Once again I heard Sharon’s screaming, which had ripped open my heart, made me love her in a second. I thought about the baby inside her right now, which would have been Luke’s baby. They would have had kids by now, I’m sure they would. If he hadn’t gone off that bridge, that flyover. The flyover was above me. I could feel its weight. Hear the weight it carried. Finally, I looked up. For the first time I looked up at the road my brother had plummeted down from. I hadn’t been able to before. I just couldn’t. I wasn’t there, of course, but many times I’ve seen him, seen Luke swerve, seen the car reach up into space and then turn. I saw it again, the wheels spinning with nothing to grip but the air.
And then the car vanished. My eyes were wide open. I pushed myself forward off the parking meter.
The letters were huge. On the concrete sides of the raised road. Someone must have climbed down over the railing sides to spray them there.
IT WAS YOU.
And then beneath, in case I didn’t get it.
RUCKER.
My gaze stayed bolted upwards. The letters were red, the same colour as on Max’s bar. The addition of my name was like a thunderbolt. It was huge. For all the world to see. I’d spent most of yesterday coming to terms with the fact that the messages had been directed at me but to see my name underneath those three words stopped me cold. My eyes were stuck to them for what seemed like an age, drips beneath where the paint had run.
But then I turned away. Quickly. If anyone followed my eyes they would see the words. And they would know, they would know the words referred to me. I felt ashamed, that the whole city would say You! You! It was you who caused this! The shame spread and then died in an instant, snuffed out by fear. Fear close to panic. I spun around again, crouching behind the meter next to me.
This wasn’t it. Not just this. I could tell. There was something else. I could feel it. Something. He was close. Was that it? He was watching me. Laughing. Waiting for me to see it, his little note. This person I had no idea about, no idea how I’d hurt so he’d want to do this to me. And now I’d seen it what would he do? I swivelled round the bottom of the meter, ducking behind the bonnet of an old Beetle. I felt vulne
rable, alone, the street closing in on me. The blank windows of the houses all seemed to be looking down at me. I was terrified but a surge of anger, overriding the fear, carried me upwards. To my feet. I wanted someone to grab hold of. To face. Or if he was going to shoot me I wanted him to, to do it now, to stop sneaking round my life. I told him to come on. I told him to get on with it. I readied myself for a shot, a knife, a speeding car. Something. But nothing happened.
And then it struck me. And I thought: no. No, please. One of these houses. Was there a woman in there? Someone I knew, had forgotten to tell Andy about? Or was…? No, it can’t have been. Not her. How could it? She was at home. We hadn’t been followed. I told myself that again and again but my heart leapt into my throat, elbowing the logic aside. I began to jog down the street and then run, looking at each doorway. What could I do? Knock on every one? Ask if there was a dead woman inside. Are you sure? Can you check? No: I had to speak to Andy. He needed to get down here. With numbers. Bang the whole street up. I reached for my phone but my hand never found my pocket.
Because there was a scream.
Towards the far end of the street, near my car. A man had screamed. On the left-hand side. He was still screaming. I looked towards the sound and saw him. He was in his late thirties, balding with a straggly ponytail. He was wearing a black heavy-metal T-shirt straining over a taut belly. For a second I couldn’t understand why he was only wearing a T-shirt but then I saw the bin bag by his side. The door behind him was open. The man had stopped screaming but now he was making another noise, not exactly a scream, more guttural, as if he’d taken a body punch. He stepped back. His feet tangled with the bag and he went over sideways. I began to move, crossing the space between us quickly, the pain in my side pulling like I was running through tangled string. When I got to him the man was trying to scurry backwards to his door.
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