“My career was mapped out for me. I had my placements, tenures and appointments handed to me. Doors were opened. Promotions were approved…” His voice drops to a whisper. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m proud of you. You stuck to your guns and did what you wanted. You succeeded on your own terms. I know I’m not an easy man to love, Joe. I don’t give anything in return. But I
He pulls off the road into a turnout and leaves the engine running as he gets out and retrieves a bag from the backseat.
“This is all I managed to bring,” he says, showing me the contents. There is a clean shirt, some fruit, a thermos, my shoes and an envelope stuffed with ?50 notes.
“I also picked up your mobile.”
“The battery is dead.”
“Well, take mine. I never use the damn thing.”
He waits for me to slide behind the wheel and tosses the bag on the passenger seat.
“They’ll never miss the Land Rover… not for a while. It’s not even registered.”
I glance at the bottom corner of the windscreen. A beer bottle label is stuck to the glass. He grins. “I only drive her around the fields. Decent run will do her good.”
“How will you get home?”
“Hitchhike.”
I doubt if he’s thumbed a ride in his entire life. What do I know? He’s been full of surprises today. He still looks like my father, but at the same time he’s different.
“Good luck,” he says, shaking my hand through the window. Maybe if we’d both been standing it would have been a hug. I like to think so.
I wrestle the Land Rover into gear and pull onto the asphalt. I can see him in the rearview mirror, standing at the edge of the road. I remember something he told me when my favorite aunt died and I was hurting inside.
“Remember, Joseph, the worst hour of your life only lasts for sixty minutes.”
The police will track me on foot along the stream. The roadblocks will take longer to organize. With any luck I will be outside any cordon they throw up. I don’t know how much time this gives me. By tomorrow my face will be all over the newspapers and on TV.
My mind seems to be speeding up as my body slows down. I can’t do what they expect. Instead I have to bluff and double bluff. This is one of those he-thinks-that-I-think-that-he-thinks scenarios, where each participant is trying to guess the other’s next move. I have two minds to consider. One belongs to a deeply pissed off policeman who thinks I’ve played him like a fool and the other to a sadistic killer who knows how to reach my wife and daughter.
The engine of the Land Rover cuts out every few seconds. Fourth gear is almost impossible to find and, when I do, I have to hold it in place with one hand on the gearstick.
I reach over the backseat and feel for the mobile phone. I need Jock’s help. I know I’m taking a risk. He’s a lying bastard, but I’m running out of people to trust.
He answers and fumbles the phone. I can hear him cursing. “Why do people always call when I’m taking a piss?” I picture him trying to balance the phone under his chin and zip up his fly.
“Have you told the police about the letters?”
“Yeah. They didn’t believe me.”
“Convince them. You must have something from Catherine that can help prove you were sleeping with her.”
“Yeah. Sure. I kept Polaroids so I could show my wife’s divorce lawyers.”
God he can be a smug bastard. I don’t have time for this. Yet I’m smiling to myself. I was wrong about Jock. He’s not a killer.
“The patient you referred to me, Bobby.”
“What about him?”
“How did you meet him?”
“Like I told you— his solicitor wanted neurological tests.”
“Who suggested my name— was it you or Eddie Barrett?”
“Eddie suggested you.”
Rain has started spitting down. The wipers have only one speed— slow.
“There is a cancer hospital in Liverpool called the Clatterbridge. I want to know if they have any record of a patient by the name of Bridget Morgan. She may be using her maiden name, Bridget Aherne. She has breast cancer. Apparently, it’s well advanced. She might be an outpatient or be in a hospice. I need to find her.”
I’m not asking as a favor. He either does this or our long association is irredeemably ended. Jock fumbles for an excuse but can’t find one. Mostly he wants to run for cover. He has always been a coward unless he can physically intimidate someone. I won’t give him the chance to wheedle out. I know that he’s lied to the police. I also have too many details about the assets he kept hidden from his ex-wives.
His voice is sharp. “They’re going to catch up with you, Joe.”
“They catch up to all of us,” I say. “Call me on this number as soon as you can.”
2
In the third form, during a holiday in Wales, I took some matches from the china bowl on the mantelpiece to make a campfire. It was near the end of a dry summer and the grass was brittle and brown. Did I mention the wind?
My smoldering bundle of twigs sparked a grass fire that destroyed two fences, a 200-year-old hedgerow and threatened a neighboring barn full of winter feed. I raised the alarm, screaming at the top of my lungs as I ran home with blackened cheeks and smoky hair.
I crawled into the far corner of the loft in the stables, wedging myself against the sloping roof. I knew my father was too big to reach me. I lay very still, breathing in the dust and listening to the sirens of the fire engines. I imagined all sorts of horrors. I pictured entire farms and villages ablaze. They were going to send me to jail. Carey Moynihan’s brother had been sent to reform school because he set fire to a train carriage. He came out meaner than when he went in.
I spent five hours in the loft. Nobody shouted or threatened me. Dad said I should come out and take my punishment like a man. Why do young boys have to act like men? The look of disappointment on my mother’s face was far more painful than the sting of my father’s belt. What would the neighbors say?
Prison seems much closer now than it did then. I can picture Julianne holding up our baby across the table. “Wave to Daddy,” she tells him (it’s a boy, of course), as she tugs down her skirt self-consciously, aware of the dozens of inmates staring at her legs.
I picture redbrick buildings rising out of the asphalt. Iron doors with keys the size of a man’s palm. I see metal landings, meal queues, exercise yards, swaggering guards, nightsticks, pisspots, lowered eyes, barred windows and a handful of snapshots taped to a cell wall.
What happens to someone like me in jail?
Simon is right. I can’t run. And just like I learned in third form, I can’t hide forever. Bobby wants to destroy me. He doesn’t want me dead. He could have killed me a dozen times over, but he wants me alive so I can
Will the police keep watching my home or will they call off the surveillance to focus on Wales? I don’t want that. I need to know that Julianne and Charlie are safe.
The phone rings. Jock has an address for a Bridget Aherne at a hospice in Lancashire.
“I talked to the senior oncologist. They give her only weeks.”
I can hear him unwrapping the plastic from a cigar. It’s early. Maybe he’s celebrating. Both of us have settled for an uneasy truce. Like an old married couple, we recognize the half-truths and ignore the irritations.
