by Kit Eyre
I shook my head. She was so close, breath tingling on my neck. I wanted to swivel into her arms, get lost in her scent like I’d done earlier, but Michael’s voice droned on in the distance and my feet refused to move.
‘Did you get your head sorted?’ she asked after a few seconds.
‘Don’t think now’s the time, Jude.’
Her arm swished against mine. ‘I need to know.’
Finally, I twisted my neck to look into her eyes. It was just like before when she’d knelt in front of my chair – open, honest, equal. Beyond her shoulder, Harriet and Caroline were focused on Michael and he was facing them. I swallowed and discreetly entwined June’s fingers with mine between our bodies. Her grip threatened my circulation, though I wasn’t much bothered, while her eyes were scanning my face for some sort of clue. I tested the words in my head before forcing them into my mouth.
‘I love you,’ I whispered.
Her lips parted then flickered with a smile. She squeezed my hand, about to speak, until Michael’s voice raised in the background. Her body sagged and I looked past her.
‘You don’t have to convince me you’ve done your homework,’ Michael was saying. ‘I still don’t understand why, I’m afraid. Well, I can get that investigated . . .’
As he trailed off, Jude turned to look at him too. He’d been making notes on a pad, pen poised for the next round. He suddenly placed it delicately down on the desk, massaging his temples with both hands, while tapping his foot against the leg of the chair. Even from behind, it didn’t look good, and I exchanged a glance with Jude. She was gnawing on the tip of her thumb, skin catching between her teeth.
‘I understand,’ Michael said abruptly in a taut voice before wrenching the headset off and tossing it across the landing. The wire reeled it back until it was swinging off the edge of the desk and he jumped up, prowling towards the staircase.
‘What is it?’ Harriet asked. ‘What did he say?’
Michael brought a hand to his chin, scrubbing at some imaginary stubble. ‘He’s given me some details. It’s Yorkshire and Humber related, it’s regional paperwork that he wants. I don’t know why; he wouldn’t tell me why.’
‘Did you hang up or did he?’ questioned Caroline.
‘I’m not fool enough to hang up on that lunatic.’ His eyes caught on me and Jude. ‘You two were downstairs earlier, weren’t you? Going through all that rubbish we need to scan.’
I nodded.
‘Did you come across anything odd to do with the region? Memos or anything like that?’
‘I don’t think so but we weren’t exactly reading the stuff.’
Jude cleared her throat. ‘What are you looking for exactly?’
‘Well, I can’t tell you exactly, can I? Second quarter of 2004, Yorkshire and Humber region. Something unusual. It’ll stand out, that’s how he put it. You need to go back down, the pair of you. Have a look.’
‘Hang on,’ Harriet said. ‘Doesn’t he want Danni on the phone?’
‘In an hour. That gives us till quarter past nine.’
‘Then we should get everyone down there looking. More likely to get a result.’
‘What, the lads looking for something that isn’t a football score or the way to the pub? Be serious for once in your life.’
All of us flinched, even Caroline. Whereas before she’d been gravitating towards him as a bulky safety blanket, now she took a step closer to Harriet. Even Jude’s eyes were narrowed, as though she didn’t recognise this version of her husband either.
Harriet scraped a hand through her hair and glared at him. ‘Much as I’d like to play favourites, we need all hands on desk. Understood?’
‘He said not,’ Michael replied, pointing his finger towards the phone. ‘Keep a lid on it, that’s what he said. Not broadcast it around the place. Jude and Danni – that’s all.’
The tension crackled between the pair of them until Harriet shrugged her agreement. A second later, Jude grabbed my arm and tugged me past the three of them to the staircase. Two flights of stairs later and we were in the cellar, the frigid air refreshing after the friction on the landing. We stood motionless on the rotting rug with dust billowing around us, then Jude turned and rested her forehead against my shoulder.
I pressed a kiss to her hair. ‘It’s okay.’
‘I know,’ she murmured. She drew back and caressed my cheek before casting a glance around the cellar. ‘Where do we start?’
‘You start on the stuff we categorised by region already,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll have a dig through the rest, see what I come up with.’
Her fingers tangled with mine briefly. ‘Okay, but where the hell did we put the Yorkshire and Humber stuff?’
I winced. ‘Good question.’
Chapter 11
June 2011
Harriet and Gemma had the sense to keep quiet on the way to my flat.
I threw the door open before the car stopped, backpack clutched in my hand. After flinging it over my shoulder, I snatched up my stick and took off to my building. Clattering footsteps warned someone was chasing me across the car park, and it sure as hell wasn’t Harriet.
‘Let me help,’ Gemma insisted, trying to slide the bag away.
I shook her off. ‘I can manage.’
‘Dan, come on, please.’
‘You lied to me,’ I hissed. ‘All that’s happened and you start lying to me again. Mind you, I shouldn’t be surprised. Habit of a lifetime.’
She clumped her hands around her chest. ‘Hey, that’s not fair.
‘No, you know what’s not fair? You spend a year keeping me from thinking about her. That was you, remember? You said the only way I was getting through this was if I separated it out, focused on finding Conrad as if it had bugger all to do with Jude. I wasn’t trying to fix what had gone on with her, that’s not what I wanted.’
‘Wasn’t it?’ asked Gemma quietly.
‘You know it wasn’t.’
‘Then why are you kicking off like this?’
‘Because you lied! I bet you knew she’d tried to call Harriet as well, didn’t you?’
Gemma switched feet. ‘No, that was as big a surprise to you as it was to me. I thought . . . I trusted that Harriet knew what she was doing, that’s all. I didn’t know Jude had called her, I thought I was in the loop.’
‘And leaving me out of it,’ I retorted, kicking the edge of my stick so it bounced off the tarmac and wobbled in the air. ‘Just get lost, go on.’
‘Dan, you know I hate her. I hate what she put you through, and I hate that Harriet doesn’t think we can do this without. But I’m also starting to think she’s right. It’s not the way I would’ve done it, but we are where we are. Let’s just run with it and –’
‘You’re both wrong. She’s not on our side. Well, she’s not on my side.’
‘I am,’ Gemma called after me as I twisted back to the door. ‘You shouldn’t be alone tonight.’
I ignored her, fumbling with my keys and managing to get inside the building without dropping anything. The door slammed shut and I dodged out of the way of the window. Eventually, I heard the car drive off and I leaned against the wall until the quivering in my leg subsided.
It took me longer than it should’ve to get up to my flat. Part of it was genuine exhaustion, the rest a reluctance I didn’t really understand until I stood shrouded in the darkness of my own hallway.
I’d managed to live in this place because I’d obliterated all memories of Jude. While I was in hospital, Gemma had gone on an IKEA spree with my dad’s credit card and changed the colour scheme from neutral to green. Every piece of furniture had been scrapped or sold, meaning that, when I got back, I barely recognised the place.
Now, though, memories were battering me. Jude barging through the door the day after our first kiss in the cellar, cheeks flushed and eyes drilling into mine. I followed the memory into the kitchen, saw her pacing around then spinning back to me with her legs planted firmly in front of the door. I
t was the look on her face as she crossed the room to press me up against the counter, knee teasing my thighs apart and lips hunting for mine.
I blinked the image away and found a cup where the apparition had been. It was an unfinished coffee, dumped on the worktop when Gemma had turned up abnormally early to collect me for our trip to Bournemouth. Now it was a clump of fungus that reeked of muddy feet wiped off on cabbage leaves. I went through the ritual of boiling the kettle and filling the cup with scalding water. The fungus bubbled to the rim then sank out of sight, leaving the smell to spread around the kitchen until my throat constricted and I had to crack open the window.
The stench had deadened what little appetite I’d had. Instead of forcing myself to heat some soup through, I boiled the kettle again and made myself a hot chocolate in the mug Gemma had bought me for my eighteenth. The sugary aroma neutralised the fungus, taking me back a few months to winter in Scotland with my parents. Night after night, we’d sat wrapped up in blankets on the patio, listening to Radio 2 and sipping my dad’s hot chocolate laced with a good nip of Baileys.
I gathered up the mug and hobbled into the living room. The answering machine was flashing with three new messages that could only have come from my parents since I’d been away with Gemma and Harriet. I settled on the sofa and hit play.
‘Danni, it’s Mum. I bet I’ve just missed you. Never mind, I’ll not call you on your mobile. I just wanted to say about your dad’s birthday – don’t get him anymore whisky. He’s off it. Or, at least, he will be by then. You always buy him whisky. Buy him a nice jumper instead; BHS have got a sale on. Something smart he can wear in the shop instead of those dreadful golf things. Anyway, we can talk about it when you get back. Love you, sweetheart.’
I smiled and sipped my chocolate. No doubt this attempt to get him off the whisky would be as successful as all the others. Maybe I’d wrap the bottle in a suitable beige jumper though, just to be on the safe side.
‘It’s your father. I know you’re not there, but this needs saying and I’ll do it better without you arguing. Your mother thinks you’re off gallivanting with the girls. I wish you were, love, but I know you too well for that. You’ll drive yourself mad looking for this Conrad, and what good will it do, eh? You’ve got to look forward, love, focus on what you’ve got, not what you had before. I’m saying this because I care. I can’t stand seeing you hurt anymore, that’s all.’
His voice splintered at the end and I heard him shuffle to end the call. The final message was left in the early hours of yesterday morning and Dad hesitated first, growling into the receiver the way he growled at the neighbour’s dog leaving presents on the front lawn.
‘Listen to me, Danielle. You’d better promise me that if you find anything you’ll go to the police. You can look, I couldn’t talk you out of that if I tried, but if there’s anything that takes you to that . . . Well, you pass it on. I’m giving Gemma a ring, and Harriet too. They’ll listen, even if you don’t. I’m not having you and your mother put through this again, do you hear?’
A long bleep echoed through the living room, leaving silence in its wake.
Chapter 12
February 2010
Wedges of paper blanketed the cellar.
All the good we’d done in the afternoon had been wiped away. The more time wore on, the more desperate the pair of us got. We ended up scanning papers then chucking them on to the floor when they turned out to be nothing more interesting than a gas bill or a rambling memo about overdue cheque payments. There was nothing useful popping out from the timeframe Conrad had given Michael, not unless he was doing all this because a phone bill hadn’t been paid in Harrogate in 2004. If there was a rhyme or reason to what he was after, we weren’t going to find it in this cellar.
As I threw a clump of electricity bills for Rotherham to the floor, my shoe scraped on the corner of a cardboard box and I swayed from side to side. Jude jumped from the sofa and caught me before I fell, wrapping me up and kissing my temple.
‘Slow down, sweetheart.’
I pulled away. ‘I can’t! He’s expecting something when he calls back, isn’t he? We’re meant to have found something and we haven’t. So what then? Does he – Will he kill us?’
‘Danni, I don’t think –’
‘Then it’s my fault, isn’t it? Because it’s me who –’
‘Hey, listen to me – listen to me.’
She grabbed both my arms, pinning them to my hips. For a moment, I struggled against her, then yielded and crumpled into her arms. Once she’d made sure I wasn’t going anywhere, she tilted her head back and stroked my cheek.
‘There’s something about the way he’s done it that doesn’t fit with him killing us. He’s protecting his identity, otherwise he’d be in here in a suicide vest or holding a shotgun or something. If he was going to blow us up, he could tell us what this is all about, couldn’t he?’
I absorbed that slowly and finally nodded. ‘I still don’t see where Vincent Knight fits into it though.’
‘Tell the truth, I don’t care,’ Jude replied, dropping a kiss on my lips. ‘Conrad’s using us to get to him. Whatever grudge he’s got, we’re just collateral damage, means to an end.’
‘You really don’t care what that end is?’
‘Not this minute. I’m more worried about you.’
My arms were still clutching her waist. I brought her closer again until our lips brushed, then I exhaled and rested my forehead on her shoulder. She steadied me like that for a minute or more before manoeuvring us both to the sofa. It belched out another cloud of dust as she sat us down, particles whirling up to the flickering bulb. Jude lodged a hand on my thigh and her thumb massaged circles through my grubby trousers.
‘What you said upstairs –’
‘Don’t.’
Her chin quivered. ‘What, are you taking it back?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, raising my hand to her cheek. ‘It’s just not the time, that’s all. Maybe tomorrow morning –’
‘It’s always tomorrow, isn’t it?’
‘Come on, Jude, it’s not exactly a normal day.’
She wrenched away from me, fire dancing in her eyes. ‘As far as I’m concerned, no day since last summer’s been normal. But we’ve never talked about that either, have we? No, we just carried on as if it was, as if me going home to him every night was the way you wanted it to be. Was it?’
‘No –’
‘Then why? That first morning, I woke up and I wanted to explain. How I’d been the night before . . .’ She trailed off and pressed her lips together. ‘It was the only way I could get through to you. I didn’t think you’d listen, I had to show you. You’d got your head buried in the sand – you still have. But I was secure when I woke up and I just thought . . .’
‘Thought what?’
Her fingertips stretched to meet mine, sparking heat between my legs. Given what was going on around us, the desire was inappropriate, but the corresponding twist in my chest wasn’t. I leaned forward to coax her into a sweet kiss then drew back and held her gaze.
‘Thought what?’ I repeated.
‘I was ready,’ she murmured, scraping her fingers through my hair. ‘I wanted to tell you, but you wouldn’t let me get the words out.’
‘Jude . . .’ I swallowed a lump of dust congealing in my throat. ‘Ready for what?’
‘To leave him,’ she said simply.
The words prickled along my arms then trembled into my stomach. It wasn’t shock, I recognised, more like relief. I suddenly realised I’d known it right from that morning, when I’d smothered her with kisses to stem her explanations. Twelve hours into an affair I hadn’t understood I was craving until two days earlier and I wasn’t ready to think about it being anything more than physical. Since then, I’d just ignored the obvious, unable to deal with the implications of it until tonight had split my defences straight down the middle.
‘Danni . . . Say something.’
I licked my lips as s
omething else struck me. ‘If you’re serious, then you slept with him when you wanted to leave him. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?’
‘I betrayed you,’ she admitted. ‘I’m sorry.’
Upstairs, the door creaked and then clicked shut. Both of us flinched, knowing I’d shut it on our way down here. Whoever was up there scuffed a shoe against the stone before descending the steps with twelve dull thuds. Jude and I stood, hands locked together by sweat, but neither of us were prepared for Michael ducking his head under the beam as he landed at the foot of the stairs.
Chapter 13
July 2011
After ten minutes, the knocking turned into a dull thudding that reverberated round the flat. Someone was kicking the door in, which probably ruled out an impromptu visit from my parents, and, knowing my neighbours, it wouldn’t be long before they called the police. They’d been after getting me out of here for a year now; they’d take any ammunition they could get. So I dragged myself to the door and yanked it open.
‘Let me in,’ Gemma demanded.
Her boot was already lodged in the gap. Short of jamming a hunk of wood into her knee, I didn’t have much of a choice. I let the door swing till the hinges caught and limped back to the living room. She stomped in behind me, growling then bouncing over plates and pizza boxes to jerk the curtains apart.
I shielded my eyes. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘Here was me thinking you were dead,’ Gemma retorted as she spun around.
‘Well, I’m not, am I?’
‘You might as well be. It’s not bloody fair, Dan. You can’t do this again, you just can’t.’
‘I wanted to be alone. After that stunt you pulled, do you blame me?’
She clenched her fists. ‘Yeah, well, I remember what happened the last time. I listened to you then, didn’t I? Left you alone and what happened? I’m not going through that again – I’m not putting your parents through it, even if you don’t give a toss.’