In the garage the engine came to life. Jason gave a little yelp of victory. Zoe came back into the doorway, still drying her hands. He was standing next to the bike, grinning all over his face, turning the throttle, making the engine roar. ‘Told you, didn’t I?’ he shouted, over the noise. ‘Remember this face. Remember me!’
She put the towel down on the workbench and came over to the bike, shaking her head admiringly. ‘Great,’ she yelled. ‘Do I owe you anything?’
‘A ride? That is-’ Remembering his manners, he stopped revving and let his face go sober. ‘A ride? If you don’t mind.’
‘You want to drive my Shovelhead?’
‘No – I mean, not if it’s a problem. Really. Forget I asked.’
‘No, no – I mean, it’s…’ She nibbled her lip. Pretended to be struggling with this. Then, at length she said, ‘It’s fine. Are you insured?’
‘I’ll only take it up the road and back. I won’t take it out of the street.’
‘OK. I s’pose it’s the least I can do. But take care of her, eh?’
‘I will.’
Jason ran inside and came hurrying back out with a black Shoei open-face helmet. He kicked off his sandals and zipped boots on to his bare feet. He looked faintly insane in his T-shirt and the beetle headgear as he clambered on to the bike. He wobbled a bit coming out of the gates, then got into his stride. He turned out on to the street in second and was gone. She could hear the blast of the engine coming over the hedges and gardens as he sped up the road. She turned and went quickly back into the house.
The bookshelves in the living room didn’t contain anything special. A few photos of the family, the Mooneys on their wedding day, Jason as a baby, a tall thin girl in a bridesmaid’s dress. The books were mostly non-fiction, on domestic policy and languages – Spanish, Russian, Arabic. Nothing that looked like business files. She went into the hallway and opened all the other doors. A utility room, a studio with half-finished pottery dotted around, a dining room with the curtains closed to stop the sun fading the furniture. And a room that was locked.
She rattled the door. She ran her fingers over the frame, feeling for a key. Checked in the bowl on the hallstand, picking up car keys on a springy spiral rubber ring, a gas-meter key, some petrol receipts. No key.
She went back through the garage, across the driveway and through the wooden side gate. Here, the houses stood quite close to each other, and the side access was in shadow. On this wall there were only two windows in the Mooneys’ house, one frosted, with the overflow from the toilet below it, the second the window into the locked room. She put her hand against it and peered inside. She could make out a big mahogany leather-topped desk with a green banker’s lamp on it, a leather armchair and a footstool. On the shelves beyond the desk she could plainly see the box files lined up. ‘Kosovo’, one said, ‘Pristina’ another. Maybe some record of whom he’d paid. And how. She drummed her fingers on the glass. She could smash the window now, be in and out in no time.
The noise of the bike coming back echoed down into the gap between the buildings, and she stepped back from the window, her hands itching to just do it. But the bike was getting louder and louder and at the last second she changed her mind. She went back to the gate leading to the driveway and found it had become stuck. She yanked at it, rattled the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. The bike was nearer now. She glanced over her shoulder at the back garden. It’d take too long to go that way. She gave the gate one last tug. This time it opened, and she stepped outside, just in time for Jason to sweep into the driveway.
He stopped the bike, took off his helmet and looked at her curiously.
‘Hi.’ She patted the bike’s handlebars. ‘You enjoy her? You not enjoy?’
His eyes went from her to the side door. ‘You OK?’
‘Eh?’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Yeah. I was looking for a hosepipe. Wanted to give her a wash- down.’
‘A wash-down? She doesn’t look like she needs one.’
‘I think she does.’
‘There’s a hosepipe there.’ He gestured at the tap mounted on the front of the house, the hose carefully wound away on a green and yellow reel. ‘Didn’t you notice that before you went round the back?’
‘No.’
Jason scratched his head thoughtfully, wrinkled his mouth. Then he swung his leg off the bike and looped his helmet around his wrist – the way she’d seen bikers loop helmets when they were getting ready to swing them as a weapon.
‘Jason?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Who
‘Well, Evie, you’ll regret it if you’ve taken anything out of the house. I’ve got your number-plate. And you have no idea how tenacious my father is when it comes to things like that.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
‘You really don’t want to mess with my father.’
‘I’m not messing with anyone.’ She held up her hands. ‘I’m going.’
She walked past him, half expecting to hear the whistle of his helmet cracking down on her head, he’d changed so quickly. Respect to you, Jason. You’re not the pushover I thought. She scooped up her own helmet from the driveway, Jason shadowing her, arms folded, watching her zip her jacket, swing her leg over the Shovelhead.
‘I left the towel on the workbench.’ She revved the engine, held up a hand and flashed him a smile. ‘You might want to hang it up, keep Mum happy, eh? See you around, Jason. Nice knowing you.’
21
In the Ladies at Bristol airport Sally stood with her back to the mirror, holding her dress out to study the lipstick. In the reflection she could make out what she thought were letters, as if she had leaned on something. A display or some graffiti. But where? Most were smudged and indecipherable, but she was sure she could make out ‘AW’. And maybe ‘G’.
She went into one of the cubicles, took off her dress and tried to clean it with a packet of wet wipes she had in her bag. But the lipstick wouldn’t come off. It just smudged further into the fabric, and in the end she had to put it back on, take off her sweater and wrap it round her waist so that it hung down and covered the lipstick. She went back to the car park, goosebumps coming up on her arms in spite of the sun. She threw her handbag on the back seat of the Ka and was about to get into the driver’s seat, when something occurred to her. Steve had driven here – she’d been in the passenger seat. She slammed the door and went round to the other side of the car, opened the door and dropped to a crouch, carefully touching the upholstery. Her finger came away red. She looked at it for a long time. Then, hurriedly, she pulled some more wipes out of the handbag and placed them so they were spread across the seat. She leaned a small amount of weight on to them with her hands, and counted in her head up to a hundred. She could hear other people, trundling their suitcases across the car park behind her. Could hear the pause in their steps as they stopped to look at her crouched in the opened door.
She turned over the wipes and studied them. For this to have been imprinted on her dress it must have been there since she’d got into the car. It had been parked overnight at Steve’s, on his driveway. She tried to recall if she’d locked it. She never did at Peppercorn, so maybe she hadn’t last night. Maybe kids had got into it.
She spread out the wipes and moved them around until they fitted together. The letters were blurred, some of them missing, and the ones she could work out were in reverse. She found a ‘Y’, then a ‘G’ and then a ‘W’. She saw ‘ITCH’, the letters in sequence, and, quite clearly, ‘EVIL’. Another ‘Y’ and ‘ITH’, then the whole thing tumbled suddenly into place.
Trembling she shot to her feet, almost banging her head against the car roof. She spun round, as if someone might be standing behind her, watching. All she could see for hundreds of yards in every direction were cars, the heads of one or two travellers moving among them. She slammed the door and started off towards the terminal at a trot. Then, realizing Steve had already gone through into Departures, she raced back to the car and fumbled her phone out of the bag, dropping things in her haste. She dialled his number, her fingers like jelly. There was a pause, then an electronic hum, and the phone connected to his voicemail.
