Show Me The Sky

by Nicholas Hogg

  MM – OK, Ronnie, maybe we should wrap things up, I can see how upset you are about the disappearance of a friend you call your ‘kid brother’. In the hope he is out there, that he walks past a newsstand and picks up a copy of Music Matters, would you like to finish the interview with a message, a few words for the missing person, Billy K?

  RS – Come home, Billy. Make music. Fuck the rest of them. Fuck ’em all. We know what it’s all about.

  PART FOUR

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Anna.’

  ‘God! Jim. Finally. I get to hear your voice. Are you OK?’

  ‘Fine, fine.’

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  ‘Right now I’m in Nairobi airport, but not for much longer.’

  ‘You sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Really. I’m just being a policeman.’

  ‘Wherever you’re going, Roberts probably knows already.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He’s smarter than we give him credit. I accessed your case account and found emails from the Australian police confirming your withdrawal of cash at the airport, CCTV footage of you getting into a taxi, and a statement from the driver confirming he dropped you outside the Opera House. No problems there. But then I found a file of your previous aliases – with Charles Nash flagged live.’

  ‘Well, Charles Nash will be touching down at Heathrow in about nine hours from now. Perhaps Roberts is planning a welcome home party.’

  ‘That you’re coming home is great news.’

  ‘Glad to hear it.’

  ‘And if there is a party, it’s just you and him.’

  ‘Intimate. I didn’t think we were that close.’

  ‘Listen. He’s explicitly ordered DI Calf not to inform British or Kenyan authorities.’

  ‘He could have me picked up at Heathrow if he wants. Maybe he’s saving the embarrassment.’

  ‘Is he that caring?’

  ‘His, not mine.’

  ‘You know I’m not bothered either way. As long as you’re back. And I’m not the only one waiting on you.’

  ‘The fans at Heathrow.’

  ‘Your ex and your daughter.’

  ‘You spoke with Meg?’

  ‘And Gemma. They both just appeared in the office yesterday. Meg carried Gemma over to my desk to say hello, and then, after the false pleasantries thought it right to ask about you in front of your daughter. Gemma started crying, whimpering that you hadn’t taken her to the park for two weeks, that the ducks would be hungry because no one’s been giving them bread.’

  ‘Roberts would’ve put Meg up to it. He must’ve been desperate before the Nash ID revelation. What he doesn’t know is that I have a bite, the tugging fish. If my wife or Roberts knew this I think they’d realise any form of persuasion was fruitless. I’m either reeling in Billy K or letting him drag me under.’

  ‘You just called Meg your wife.’

  ‘Ex. Don’t be like that, Anna.’

  ‘I’ve missed you, and I’m not sure the feeling has been reciprocated.’

  ‘It has, I promise. Just that, I have something here. Could be imagination. I might be chasing a ghost. Then again, maybe I’m breathing down his neck.’

  ‘Who, Jim?’

  ‘Billy K.’

  ‘You serious?’

  ‘Serious enough to be shot at.’

  ‘Tell me you’re joking.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Billy K holding the gun, unfortunately.’

  ‘I want to meet you at Heathrow. We’ll go away somewhere, on the coast, clear our heads.’

  ‘Not the airport.’

  ‘You don’t want to see me?’

  ‘I do want to see you, of course I do. But, well, for a start it’s odd that Roberts has left this wide open. I don’t understand his thinking.’

  ‘He doesn’t want the circus of the media. You said yourself.’

  ‘I don’t know. Something else.’

  ‘And so what if he is waiting for you? Tell him what you have. A lead. That’s dedication.’

  ‘I think they call it insubordination.’

  ‘You’ll come and see me?’

  ‘You know I will.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘You trust me?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘You trust me not to put you in danger, and that I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t myself?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I need you to do something.’

  ‘Break the law for you?’

  ‘Detective work.’

  ‘It’s about Roberts, isn’t it?’

  ‘Listen, I need to know what he’s planning so I stay a step ahead.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Whatever Roberts is up to, he’s arranged it outside of the MET. Mining his account log would show nothing. We need his mobile history. No way you can access his records without his actual clearance, so you have to go directly for his phone. And I think I know how.’

  ‘Jim, are you serious?’

  ‘Just listen. If the world were crashing down around his ears he’d still play squash at the Officer’s Club on a Thursday afternoon – today. He’ll be on court 2 p.m. sharp. Take along passport photos and your MET ID. Join up as a member. But first go into my desk. In the bottom drawer there’s an old-fashioned card reader. When Roberts is in the morning operation’s meeting step into his office, find his gym membership card and swipe it with the reader. Take the print to Begum Electronics on Borough High Street, and they’ll transfer this information on to a new card. Anna, are you still with me?’

  ‘I should have you sectioned.’

  ‘You know the gifted are mad.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Take this fake card to the gym. Sign up as a member at reception to get your own card. If you swipe the fake on entry the photo will come up as Roberts, so don’t. Then slip into the men’s changing rooms. Roberts’s locker is top row immediately right. Insert the fake, open the door and grab his phone, then whip out his SIM and copy the history.’

  ‘Good God, Jim.’

  ‘No sweat. If you get caught, use the excuse of playing me along, you know, drawing me into a trap for Roberts. He’ll buy that. You’re very believable.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Intelligent.’

  ‘You can stop there. I’ll give you time to think of some more adjectives before we meet. Anyway, this call might be monitored.’

  ‘You’re a star. Really. Anna, I want this done with, Billy K case closed, so I have time for you, us.’

  ‘You better get that plane, then. And I better get some passport photos. Where to meet?’

  ‘I think you know where.’

  ‘Does this happen to be a little place by the sea?’

  ‘Where the waves comes crashing against the harbour wall.’

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  ‘Tomorrow night.’

  I have no checked luggage to collect, nothing. My half-empty holdall swings by my side as I walk past the baggage carousels. The first suitcases clatter down the chute from the Nairobi flight, but I’m walking on, sidestepping arrivals from all corners of the globe, the weekend tourists, the returning holidaymakers browned by sweeter climes, the new lives poised on the stamp of a customs official.

  And I walk past the rigmarole of arrival, already beyond passport control. I’m still waiting for a hand on my shoulder when I stroll the NOTHING TO DECLARE lane. But then I’m out, beyond the drawn lines. No one has challenged my entering the UK on a false passport. All Roberts had to do was inform customs of my landing, and the millisecond it took that tiny chip to fire my identity on to a computer screen, an official could have discreetly escorted me into some back office. With Roberts sat waiting, feet up on a desk, sipping a cup of tea.

  Instead I squint in the winter sunshine of the Terminal 4 car park. Maybe he’s here, leaning against my car smoking a cigarette?

  H
e’s not. All I find at my car is a ticket and leaflet warning about the overstay rates. Before I unlock the door, I stand and turn, see the planes circling to land, the planes lifting into the cloudless blue. And then again I scan the rows of cars, wonder if someone is sitting and watching, preparing to follow.

  Out of the car park, following signs to the M25, I check the mirrors constantly, noting what vehicles stay on my tail for more than half a mile. But most of the traffic is heading the same direction anyway, and though it’s mid-morning, the roads choke, no room for overtaking. A red Saab and a white BMW have no choice besides sitting on my bumper. And when I turn on to the M25 the gridlock continues. Forget the London Eye, this is the world’s largest Ferris wheel, but without the view.

  Then the flow of traffic accelerates, together, a group sigh for movement. I can feel tension ease from the shoulders of the other drivers. And when I’m not watching what’s behind me, I’m looking around my own car, acknowledging that it is my car, a two-week-old newspaper on the passenger seat, empty crisp packets tucked into the ashtray, a roll of mints. It is my car, but there’s no comfort in this fact.

  And for a few seconds I see myself from the next lane. Walking in the outside lane. I’m walking alongside the car that I’m driving, watching myself focused on the cars in front, eyes forward, the fields and sky beyond blurred with speed. I’m walking along the outside lane watching myself drive.

  Then I return, to the windscreen flecked with dirt and insects, brake lights and the backs of heads. I can feel the sweat on my palms, the pressure of the pedals against the soles of my feet. Now the countryside has stopped and the car is in motion, trees and pylons zipping past.

  I take the slip road to the M1, merge with the rush of trucks, vans, buses and cars pointed north. And now, appropriately, the skies darken, clouds fatten with rain above a monochrome landscape. You can almost see the drivers lean forward, as though steeling themselves for a long climb, that this is the beginning of a great slope to the top of the country.

  Each time I drive this stretch of motorway, I’m a passenger of my own memory, no will to think of anything but the back of the police car, my bandaged head, the two quiet officers who drove me home.

  I pull into Watford Gap services, not for a break from driving, but a break from thinking, that hum of who you are that vibrates up from the tarmac, the bump of a cat’s eye or join in the road, through the rubber of the tires, along the steering column and into your loose hands, rested there like puppet hands on string.

  Maybe I’m just jet-lagged, exhausted. I go into the café and buy a coffee, a sandwich to take away. I could sit down on a plastic seat, but I’m afraid of stopping. In the toilets I need courage to look in the mirror, to see myself fixed in space and time, the fear of a lasting moment.

  A fine rain sweeps across the car park. Trucks rattle along the motorway. I’m looking around for someone who might be watching, waiting. Every second person seems like a spy. Nearing the car, I see the rain has highlighted the dirt, the neglect.

  And a handprint over the rear wing. Not mine. Level with the back wheel I drop my sandwich on the floor. When I squat to pick it up, I reach under the arch. I move quickly, dust off the sandwich.

  Back inside the car I start the engine. What was fastened above the wheel is in my pocket. Once I’m accelerating up the slip road on to the motorway, I take it between my thumb and forefinger to inspect. A transponder, a tracker, a device beaming my location from satellite to the screen of whoever placed it there, whoever is following.

  The harder the rain hammers at the windscreen, the faster I drive. Into fifth now, a firmer grip on the steering wheel. If they want sport, they can have it. The rain streaks the windscreen, I weave back and forth from inside to outside lane, overtaking at 130 mph, 140 mph.

  I cut three lanes to take the exit at junction 16. Horns blare. Coming off the slip road I feel like a pilot touching down on a runway. About five miles along the A road towards Bedford, I take a right, on to a narrow lane cutting between fields dotted with sheep, huddled close against the rain.

  I’ve been here before, this stretch of desolate road. Last time in an orange Metro, my hand clutched on a knife. If I’d reached across and stabbed the teacher, I wouldn’t be here right now, alone on an empty road, following a ghost, followed by a ghost. But then we can speculate on a million twists and turns of every day, what could and would happen if this and that did. Or didn’t.

  Outside the entrance to the field I’d woken in that morning all those years ago, I pull up, leaving the engine running as I jump out and open the metal gate. The track down to the derelict signal house is cratered with deep puddles. A pile of hardcore has been dumped, ready to fill the holes. I weave around the rubble, drive over the grass and through the large wooden doors, propped open by bricks.

  Since I slept here, kept from the cold by a stolen coat, the roof has been covered by sheet tarpaulin, flapping wildly in the wind. What was an earthen floor is now covered in straw. Plastic barrels of fertiliser stand in the corner.

  I switch off the engine, pick up the tracker and get out. I crouch again by the rear arch of the wheel and reattach it to the underside. Then I open the boot, take out a ski jacket, woolly hat, and a pair of handcuffs.

  Before stepping out into the cold, February rain, I scan the lane for other cars. Nothing. An empty field in an empty world. Not even a bird. I zip up the jacket and pull on the hat. I shut the wooden doors and walk back to the edge of the field, where the access track runs parallel to the hedgerow, stepping not on the mud, but the thick green grass. Tyre tracks in, but no prints out.

  Then I slide beneath the barbed wire and the hedgerow, slip into the freezing water of the ditch.

  Twenty years ago I crouched in a ditch of freezing water to hide. Did someone say you can never step into the same river twice? I don’t believe them. What has happened in two decades suddenly means nothing. I’m still a motherless child a long way from home, in fear of being found.

  An engine, the gate opening. When the wheels squelch past my hiding place, I lower my body deeper into the icy water. A black Range Rover brakes before the pile of hardcore. I can only make out the profile of a man in the driving seat, alone. He cuts the engine and sits. For five minutes he’s just a silhouette. Finally I see him moving, checking something in his hand. Then the door opens. I’ve never seen him before. He’s as tall as me but heavier in the shoulders. He has short, black, cropped hair, a broad forehead, and a thick black moustache. I see this when he turns back to look at the open gate.

  And I see a handgun, lengthened by a silencer, pressed against his thigh.

  He wastes no time staking out the building. He pulls open the wooden doors and storms inside, gun drawn. I scramble up from the ditch and run, ducking behind the cover of his car. I run stooped, like a man expecting a bullet.

  Flat against the wheel of the Range Rover, I uncurl and look to the signal house through the rain-smattered windows. He’s still in there. And about to find an abandoned car. I open his rear door and slide inside. I close the door with the handle held up to dull the click shut, and crouch behind the driver’s seat. Mounted on the dashboard is the GPS system blinking with my location.

  Now I untie my right boot. Eye by eye I draw out the lace, binding each end around the four fingers of both hands. I can hear only the raindrops pattering on the roof. And my thudding heart. This is hide and seek, boys’ games. But instead of name- calling and ribbing the found, we have a shooting.

  Finally the clunk of the lifted handle, the door opening. ‘Fuck,’ he says. He can’t see me. I hear him spit. ‘Where the fuck?’ He stands for a moment, no, an eternity, before getting in. And when he falls back on to the seat, I’m nearly pinned by his weight. I have no idea if he has the gun in his hand or not.

  As soon as the door’s shut, I move, up and over the seat back, yanking hard on that lace about his throat, holding on for dear life. He bucks. The lace is a rein. I put my knees into the seat back
and pull harder.

  He makes no sound, nothing. Nothing. I’m choking him to death and he’s silent. Both his hands work on prying free the cord, but I’ve cut into flesh, slicing his jowls with nylon. When his hand dips to his inside pocket, I quickly pass the lace from left to right, twisting tighter. Then I go over the front of his chest, like a father might fasten a child into a safety seat. And the two of us draw the one gun. We both grip the hilt, that schoolyard game of interlocking fingers, not knowing whose is where and how to move. He’s stronger, but I have my weight coming down, gravity. He’s trying to angle the barrel from his chest into mine.

  ‘Give me the fucking gun,’ I hiss. He does not. The lace is about his windpipe, but he can still breathe, the headrest holding off the crucial centimetre. And he knows this much. In fact he knows a lot, to find me here in this field, to be this intimate in our deadlock, within kissing distance, my soft cheek an inch from his teeth. He’d bite a hole in my face if it was offered, and I lean out further. A mistake. He jams a finger inside the trigger guard.

  When he starts firing I still have a hold of the hilt. Foam explodes from the passenger seat. I can feel the bullets passing through the down of the ski jacket, grazing my armpit. I’m over the top of his head now, working the barrel away from my body. The passenger window pops with the next shot. And now I help him out a little, wedging my finger over his and firing, firing, firing, the action of the hammer louder than the silenced shot, the flying bullets lost beyond the broken window.

  On the empty click I swing back around the seat, pull again on that nylon noose, and lift. He fights the cord with both hands, gasping now. I bunch both ends of the lace in my right hand and reach into my jacket pocket, whipping out the cuffs. I drop them on his lap. ‘Put them on.’ He doesn’t. Once more I pull with both hands, as though the lace was a length of cheese wire and I might severe his head. ‘Or die in this fucking field.’