Ugley Business

by Kate Johnson

  “Great, well, then, give me his phone number or something and I’ll call him tomorrow.”

  “I can do better than that. I can take you to see him.”

  “Great!” Maybe it wasn’t such a bad day after all. “Where does he live?”

  “Ireland. I’ll meet you at the airport at five-thirty tomorrow,” Docherty said, and cut the call.

  I lay there, staring at the phone for quite a while. Ireland? Five-thirty in the morning? I looked at the clock. It was gone midnight.

  “Who was that?” Luke asked, and I looked up to see him standing in the bedroom doorway. He was wearing boxers and a couple of bandages, and I wanted to ravish him.

  “Docherty. I’m going to Ireland tomorrow.”

  Luke blinked. “I’m sorry, I thought you just said—”

  “He knows someone out there who can tell us about this Xe La thing.”

  “Do you have to go there?”

  “Apparently.”

  Luke nodded tiredly. “What about Angel?”

  Bollocks. Angel. I dialled Docherty. “What about Angel?”

  “Your friend Macbeth is coming over.”

  I relayed this information to Luke, who nodded, got his phone and called Macbeth to check.

  “Do I really have to come with you tomorrow?” I asked Docherty.

  “Well, no, you don’t have to. But it is SO17 business. And Professor Kennedy likes blondes.”

  “Can’t Luke go?” I grumbled.

  “Not that kind of blond. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Docherty said. “Pack for an overnight,” and then he was gone.

  I looked up at Luke, who was finishing his call. “Macbeth’s going over there for five tomorrow,” he said. “He’s going to drop your car off in a bit.”

  “I don’t want to get up early. I got up yesterday.”

  “How have you survived shift work for two years?” Luke asked, stretching and yawning. Damn, I wished he hadn’t done that.

  “By telling myself to get a new job.”

  “Well, now you have one.”

  “And I’m getting less sleep.”

  Luke grinned. “I can take a hint. ‘Night.”

  And then he was gone, too, leaving me to mumble a sad little “goodnight” to his closed door, and lie there all night getting very hot and twitchy thinking about him lying there in his boxers, all fit and toned and hot and gorgeous.

  By the time morning came, I’d slept about half an hour, trying to put thoughts of the dead man on my sofa out of my head by thinking about Luke, and thoughts of Luke out of my head by thinking about the dead man. Probably I should have come up with something else to take my mind off things, but my head was full of confusion.

  I’d been dreaming about Luke all night, about the things we used to do and the things I wanted to do, and when I woke up to the sound of his voice whispering my name, his fingers brushing the hair away from my face, his skin hot against mine, I smiled.

  Chapter Nine

  He was inches from my skin. “Luke…”

  “Are you awake?”

  “Mmm.” I stretched happily.

  “Good. You have to be at the airport in twenty minutes.”

  My eyes slammed open and I stared at him. “Shit!”

  I shoved him away and leapt off the sofa, forgetting that I was still tangled up in my sleeping bag and crashing down on the floor in a very unsexy heap. Luke laughed. I rubbed my throbbing calf, scowling at him.

  “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”

  “I was asleep too. Didn’t you set your alarm?”

  Damn. I knew there was something I should have done. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and grabbed my bag, heading for the bathroom. I just about had time for a shower, as long as I made it really, really quick.

  It was while I was in the shower that I realised I’d have to go home and get some more clothes. All I had were the shorts and T-shirt I’d been wearing last night. I didn’t have anything warm, or my phone charger or my wallet or anything. Just moisturiser and deodorant.

  I threw myself into my clothes and hurtled for the door, Luke sitting on the bed, watching me with lazy amusement.

  “Have you ever been on time for anything?” he asked.

  “I was born early. Since then, no.” I snatched up my sleeping bag and made for the front door. “Dammit, Luke, what’s your code?”

  “I’m not that stupid,” he said, coming through into the living room. “I already unlocked it.”

  I yanked at the door handle. Smartarse. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Apparently I’m staying overnight. Can you feed Tammy for me? Give her lots of nice things and tell her I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  I dashed out to Ted, who was sitting there looking heroic, and realised I couldn’t get in. “Keys,” I yelled up to Luke, who was standing in the doorway. He looked in the letterbox and chucked them down to me. I threw up the bag of things I’d bought for Tammy, got in the car, and screeched back to my flat.

  Five minutes to go. Not impossible, in the same way that telekinesis was not impossible. I hauled out my little hostess suitcase, slammed a few things into it, tied a fleece sweater around my waist, put my gun into its little travelling case and checked I’d got my licence.

  Then I got into Ted and drove a lot faster than is advisable with a battered car, making it to the staff car park just in time to realise I’d left my pass at home and so couldn’t get into said car park.

  Fuck it, I thought, I am not paying for airport parking, and I rammed Ted at the barrier. We went through, parked in the car-pool only area, and I raced up to the terminal, only remembering when I got to the top of the undercroft stairs that I had no idea where I was supposed to be meeting Docherty, or even where exactly we were going. I hadn’t even managed to find out what airline we were with.

  I stared praying it wasn’t Ace. I couldn’t cope with colleagues when I was in this state.

  My phone started ringing and I knew it was Docherty even before I looked at it.

  “I know, I’m late, I overslept,” I said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Just coming past Boots.”

  “I’m at the Ace desks. Do you know where that is?”

  Patronising git. “I’m sure I can find it,” I said, and when I spotted him, tried to sneak up behind and scare him.

  He turned and grabbed my wrists. “Got you.”

  “Where are we even going?”

  “Kerry.” He gestured to the desk. “Check in.”

  I heaved my suitcase onto the belt, handed over my passport, and waved the gun case at the (thankfully unknown) check-in chick. “I have a firearm.”

  She nodded, totally unconcerned. The first time anyone told me they had a gun, I nearly fainted. Now I just do exactly what she did—called the police and the security people, weighed and tagged it, and waved it off with a very nice man in a hi-vis.

  The policeman who checked my licence gave me a once-over. “Do I know you?”

  “I work here.”

  “Why are you taking a gun with you?”

  I sighed and got out my military ID. “I take it everywhere.”

  He nodded and let me go. My heart was still thumping: I have a good-girl’s fear of the police, even when I know that, strictly speaking, I’m sort of above them.

  Ooh, get me. Above the police. Not the law, just the police.

  When the policeman had gone, I looked around for Docherty and found him talking to the check-in girl.

  “Do you have an ETA?”

  “I’m afraid not,” she said. “The problem is the plane is grounded in France, and so until we can find a replacement your flight is delayed indefinitely. I’m sorry, I’ve only just been told.”

  I looked at Docherty. Did this mean we wouldn’t have to go? I could go back to bed? Mmm, bed.

  “When’s the next flight?” Docherty asked.

  She looked something up on the computer. “To Kerry? 1420,” she said.
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br />   Docherty looked up at the Ace map. “How about Shannon?”

  “There’s an 0850 flight,” she said.

  “How do I book that?”

  She looked at the customer service desk where the queue nearly reached to Ireland itself. “Best if you phone up.”

  Docherty got out his phone and dialled. But apparently the 0850 Shannon flight was full, and there wasn’t another until this afternoon. He tried a Cork flight, but the next available one was even later.

  “We could get a Knock flight at 1130,” he said.

  “Is that good?”

  “Well, the Shannon would be better, but that’s full now, too. What the hell is going on?”

  I got out my own mobile and called Kelly in Ops. “Do you know anything about a lot of delays to Ireland?”

  “ATC strike in France,” Kelly told me. “Nothing going in or out. Lot of planes stuck there since yesterday, you know how many flights we have terminating there. Massive delays for everyone. Even cancelling some flights.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Why? Are you at the gate?”

  “No, I’m flying to Ireland. I should be boarding in ten minutes, but instead I’m getting an eleven-thirty flight. Do you know where Knock is?”

  “I don’t even know what Knock is.”

  I smiled. Airports make you very insular. “Okay, cheers, Kelly.”

  “Bye.”

  I looked over at Docherty. “Could have had an extra couple of hours in bed,” he said, and I gave him a death look.

  “I’m going to get a magazine,” I said. “Actually, fuck it, I’m getting a whole bloody novel.”

  We spent about an hour reorganising my luggage and gun—Docherty didn’t seem to have either—and went through to Starbucks where I threw caution to the wind and got Angel’s favourite, a white chocolate mocha. And you know what? It was disgusting.

  “I need pure caffeine,” I said, leaving the white froth and cream and ordering a venti Americano with an extra shot of espresso. And then I started to feel slightly dizzy, so I got a chocolate and strawberry muffin to soak up the caffeine.

  Docherty was watching me in amazement. “How can you eat that stuff?”

  “I open my mouth, bite, then chew. And after that, I swallow.”

  “Don’t you find it full of sugar?”

  “That’s precisely what I like about it.”

  The flight was delayed a further hour, but by then we were already through into airside so Docherty couldn’t change it again. I sat there and read my book, and he sat there staring into the distance. Docherty was weird.

  And I get to spend my weekend with him. Yippedee doo dah.

  By the time we boarded the flight, I had nearly finished my book, and it was a boring book, too. Docherty had somehow got us exit seats—I suspect by intimidating the PSA behind my back—and I sat down to read the last few boring pages.

  The flight wasn’t long, and we got to Knock airport just after two in the afternoon. Not bad to say we should have arrived about five hours earlier, and over a hundred miles away. We went to baggage reclaim and waited for hours for my bag. No bag. I went to the desk and enquired after the whereabouts of my firearm. No firearm.

  “It’s a SIG-Sauer nine millimetre,” I said. “It's a dangerous weapon. And you don’t know where it is?”

  She shook her head apologetically. “Did you change your flight?”

  “Erm, yes, we were going to go to Kerry…”

  “Then there’s a possibility it’s in Kerry.”

  How do these planes not get hijacked more often?

  The woman promised to track down my gun and have it couriered to Kerry airport for me, since Docherty was reluctant to give out our address in Ireland, and we went out to the car hire desk.

  I didn’t realise until I looked at the map in the hire car that we were so far away from where we should be. I took History at school, okay, not Geography. Knock is up in the top bit of Ireland, and Kerry is down at the bottom left. “Where exactly are we going?” I asked Docherty.

  “It’s not likely to be on the map.”

  What a surprise.

  “Whereabouts? Do you need directions?”

  For the first time since I’d met him, Docherty looked slightly fearful. “I know the way.”

  The roads in Ireland seemed to meander a lot, and we passed through a million adorable little villages, all painted in bright festival colours, topped off with thatch roofs and flowers in the windows.

  “It’s so pretty,” I said, and Docherty cut his eyes at me.

  “You’ve never been to Ireland before?”

  “I went to Dublin about five years ago. With my mum. Her grandfather’s Irish.”

  This didn’t elicit any kind of response.

  “Which part of Ireland are you from?”

  “Kilkenny.”

  “Like in South Park?”

  Docherty looked at me like I’d just announced I wanted a threesome with him and a duck.

  “You know, ‘Oh my God, they killed Kenny’?”

  He was still staring at me.

  “Never mind,” I said, just so he’d get his eyes back on the road. He didn’t seem to be missing his Aston, but then he never seemed to show very much emotion at all. He brooded a lot. He was good at brooding.

  It started to rain in the early afternoon, just as we passed Galway and saw the grey sea in the distance. I’d thought Irish rain might be softer and prettier, but it was just as depressing as the rain back home. At least the scenery was good here. I love Essex, but if you’re not into oil seed rape in a big way, the scenery can be a little uninspiring. This was poetry land. This was Yeats and Keats—wait, are they both Irish? George Bernard Shaw and, erm, Enya. Hmm.

  The car started juddering somewhere in County Clare and passed out just after Limerick. I say just after; on the map it was about a thumbnail’s width. To us it represented the middle of nowhere.

  Docherty sighed and got out the breakdown leaflet from the glovebox. His hand brushed my knee and sent a jolt through me. This was ridiculous. I needed to get some, but not from him.

  “They’ll be about an hour,” he said when he’d finished speaking to the breakdown people.

  “An hour?”

  “Busy day. People break down more in the rain.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

  So we sat there the car in a lay-by, watching other cars whistle by to their destinations, splattering us with mud as they went. Rain tapped and danced on the windows. I started my book again, but got bored and switched to the magazine. But the magazine was all about clothes I couldn’t afford, celebrities I didn’t like and orgasms I didn’t need to think about.

  I got the map out.

  “There’s a place here called Two Mile Borris,” I said. Docherty was unmoved. “And somewhere in Limerick called Hospital. Imagine living there. People’d think you were a permanent invalid.”

  Docherty flicked his eyebrows, but said nothing. I checked my watch, then remembered it didn’t work and wondered why I was still wearing it. I looked at the clock on my phone. We’d been here more than an hour.

  “When did they say they’d be here?”

  “Now.”

  “Oh.”

  We waited another half hour. Docherty called the breakdown people again and was told someone was on their way but they were very busy today. The rain stopped, then it started again. My stomach started rumbling loudly.

  “Have you eaten anything but that muffin today?” Docherty asked.

  “Oh, yes, I had a three-course meal on the plane,” I said. “What do you think? You’ve been with me all the time.”

  He looked out of the window at a blurry sign. “There’s a place called Kilgarry three kilometres away. They might have somewhere to eat.”

  Three kilometres was about two miles. About the distance from my flat to my parents’ house. “I could walk three kilometres.” I’d walked ten, for charity, a coupl
e of times. It took a little over two hours. Three should be easy. Forty-five minutes.

  “You have anything waterproof?”

  “Yes, but it’s in Kerry.”

  The rain was lighter, but still enough to soak me thoroughly, not to mention chill my bare legs, making me shiver. It took us over an hour to walk to Kilgarry—I no longer have any faith in Irish road signs. Or my own mathematics. Docherty strode ahead at about a million miles an hour, leaving me to straggle unglamorously after him.

  But when we got there it was worth it. I swear, we’d just walked straight into Ballykissangel. Everything was pretty. The rain stopped and the sun came out for a while to shine on the perfect little cobbled streets and bright buildings.

  We found a pub called Murphy’s—of course—and there was a sign outside promising food all day long.

  My stomach let out a louder rumble and Docherty smiled, pushing the door open.

  Inside the pub was as unlike every fake paddy pub I’ve ever been in, and exactly like all the old pubs in my village and beyond. There was the deep-down smell of ingrained smoke and old beer, but slightly different, tainted by the peat fire on the far wall. There were the leathery regulars who never, ever seem to leave, no matter what the time or the day. There were wonderfully familiar fonts advertising beers I’d never drunk but seen in pubs all over the place. Proper beers. This place looked like it wouldn’t know an alcopop if it minced up and smashed itself on the old, scarred tables.

  It smelled like cigarette smoke and crisps and beer, like old wood and rain and even a slight tint of faded perfume. It smelled like the pubs of my childhood, and I smiled as I looked around.

  Docherty had Guinness—what else?—and I ordered a half of Bulmers. I had a cheese sandwich and chips, and it tasted good.

  By the time the chatty landlady came to take our plates away, I was a pint and a half of strong cider up, tired and pretty happy. I didn’t want to have to walk back through the rain, which had just started, to the car, which probably wouldn’t. The Day From Hell seemed to be getting marginally better.

  “Do you reckon anyone will have come to the car?” I asked Docherty. He was looking damn fine in the low light of the pub.

  He looked at his watch. “We’ve been gone two hours,” he said. “Quite probably the car will have been nicked by now.”