Road Kill

The Royal Lancaster Infirmary was beginning to look depressingly familiar. The receptionist even recognised me enough to give me a faint smile as I passed her on the way in. I’d taken the time before I’d left the Watermillock to wash the worst of the blood off my hands and leathers and I’d obviously managed to avoid looking too scary. I stopped to ask about Sam, only to be told that he was still in theatre.

I found Clare on her own for once. She was lying reading a magazine inside her wire and steel cage-like frame.

“Hi Charlie!” she said, sounding pleased to see me but there was something else too. Something bleeding through in the background like a slightly off-tune radio. It took me a moment to put my finger on it, then it clicked. She was nervous. My being there made her nervous. I tried not to let that hurt.

I pulled a chair up to the bedside and sat down on it, leaning close so we could talk without being easily overheard.

“You look very serious,” Clare said, cautious. “What’s up?”

“I passed the audition for the Devil’s Bridge Club,” I said, without preamble.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly breathless, “so . . . are you still going to Ireland?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Especially after what’s happened to Sam.”

“Sam? Clare said with a flare of alarm. She swallowed. “What? What’s the matter with him?”

“The daft sod decided to come and try out for the Devil’s Bridge brigade,” I said. “Borrowed an old GPZ from a mate, specially, and got himself wiped out, big style.”

“Oh no!” Clare’s distress knifed at me but I hardened my heart along with my resolve to keep going. “Is he OK?”

I shrugged. “They’re working on him now,” I said. “But his leg was pretty badly smashed.”

She paled at the picture presented by the words. After all, she didn’t need much of an imagination to know what it was like to feel your bones breaking inside you.

“Oh God,” she murmured. “What happened, do you know?”

“I was there,” I said. “He was hit – by a white Transit van.”

“Oh no,” Clare whispered, pale as death now, a faint sheen of sweat breaking out across her forehead.

“What the hell is going on, Clare?” I said, aware that something of her anguish had transferred itself into my own voice.

She looked away. “I-I can’t tell you,” she said, her eyes filling.

“What can’t you tell me?” I demanded. “What’s so terrible that it can possibly be worse than what’s been going round inside my head since Sunday?”

“Please Charlie! I promised, I—”

“Promised who?” I cut in. “Jamie?”

Clare’s features went from colourless to flushed red like spilt ink in water.

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Clare?” I said, talking fast and low now, angry, with a wary eye out for the ever-vigilant – and protective – nursing staff. “If you and Jamie have got something going, don’t you think you owe it to Jacob to tell it to him straight?”

“He—” Clare got one word out, then stopped, her hands rising to her face, her mouth a rounded O of shock. “Oh God, Charlie, it’s nothing like that. Jamie? I hardly know him. How could you think that? He’s Jacob’s son!”

Her horrified expression was too convincing not to be genuine. The doubt collapsed and relief flooded in, making me snappy and defensive.

“So what the hell is going on between you two?” And when she opened her mouth I forestalled her by adding: “There must be something pretty special because you’ve already lied for him.”

She flushed again, staring down blankly at the pages of her magazine as though she might find the answers written there. When she finally looked up it was straight into my face.

“He came to me last week, in trouble, needing money – a lot of money,” she said simply. “And I agreed to let him have it.”

“Just like that,” I said. “What kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” I echoed, sitting back in my chair. “So, you agreed to hand over ten grand to someone you claim you hardly know and you didn’t even ask some difficult questions about what it was for? Come on, Clare – level with me!”

She stared. “How did you—?”

“Know the amount?” I finished for her. “When Sean and I threw Isobel and Eamonn out we naturally checked round to see if anything was missing. We found a bank slip for ten thousand, but no cash to go with it.”

Her shoulders came down a little, rounded in defeat. “OK,” she said tiredly. “Yes, I lent him ten thousand pounds and, however unbelievable you find it, I didn’t ask him that many difficult questions.” She sighed, pushed the magazine aside and smoothed down the front of her nightgown. “He said he was desperate, that he was in deep trouble, that he’d got in over his head.”

“The Devil’s Bridge Club,” I said and felt the despair wind through me. “Oh Clare, why didn’t you come to me? I could have tipped the word to MacMillan and he could have picked up the lot of them before it ever got this far.”