But the door handle came up on my fingers, it opened effortlessly and I swung in, one easy move. The car smelt of polish, newly valeted; well done, Toby.
He was turning round, first left to cover the door opening, then right as I took the back seat. I swung a hand around his head and cupped his forehead as his hands came up and dropped the copper piping down my left sleeve.
I had to keep it away from his mirrors, so pushed it firmly between the headrest and the palm of my hand, while pulling his head back hard with my right hand, my hand in his hair, like I’d learned in my hostage video.
The pipe pushed into his neck just above the collar.
“Shut up, Toby, just bloody shut it, Toby, or I swear to God I’m going to blow your head off. I can do it, Toby, I can kill, and I’ll just pull this trigger, do you hear, and you’ll be dead and I’ll be dead and it’ll all be over, Toby.”
“Nat, for fuck’s sake, what the hell are you doing!” His hands were over my forearm but he wasn’t pulling, the cold copper on his neck had frozen him and I felt his whole body tense. I took his phone from his top pocket. I noticed my hand was steady.
“Shut up, Toby.” Yank.
“Nat, what . . . Jesus Christ—”
“Just listen, Toby. Listen hard and we’ll both stay alive.”
I looked around quickly. No one at the doors. Just people passing, middle-distance staring.
“Just drive very slowly and calmly out of the square straight ahead. Don’t turn round, Toby. I’m serious. Or I’m pulling this frigging trigger. Just go.”
He slowly lowered his hands, as if balancing, and leaned forward obediently, bringing a shaking arm under control to start the car. Good.
“Lock the doors.”
We pulled away, behind a freezer van. I pushed the pipe harder into his flesh at an angle. I wanted him to feel the edge of the barrel. Toby was making little grunts.
“Nat?”
“Follow the main road. Down the hill.”
“Nat, take it easy. Please just be calm. Let’s talk.”
“Just keep driving.”
We pulled up at lights. Cars beside us. Businessmen. Families. I began to feel rather less conspicuous, rather more stupid. Had I really just said “Drive”?
“Shut up. I’ll tell you where to go.”
I looked behind. What was I looking for? Maybe a car would pull across in front of us. The road widened to the edge of town as it became light-industrial, with warehouses and shuttered wholesale shops.
“Now fork left,” I said, like I knew where we were going.
The road rose again gently, some houses and a school on the left, a pile of tractor tyres to the right. I looked behind again. A soft-drinks float. Really?
“Turn right.”
A recreation field. The drinks float has gone straight on.
“Pull in here. Turn the engine off.”
My arms ached. I so wanted to let go now. But I pulled Toby’s head back again and pushed the piping.
“You didn’t expect me, Toby, did you? You didn’t think you’d see me again.”
I was hissing in his ear.
“I’ve killed, Toby, I’ve just killed grown men, blood all over my hands, and I can kill you. It’ll be so bloody easy. I’ll just pull my trigger and your throat will be all over the windscreen. Is this where you’re going to die?”
And all the time he was saying: “Nat, what are you doing, why are you doing this, Nat, what’s going on?”
“You and your bastard little friends, Toby. How was it arranged? What was the plan? You fucking threw me away, Toby.”
“I don’t understand, Nat. I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t know what’s going on. I just don’t understand.”
I could see in the rear-view mirror that he’d started to cry. Softly, resignedly. Like the boy Jon at school. I looked at myself in my own right eye, below and slightly behind his. I looked minx-like and he just looked blank, hopeless, staring unseeing over the bonnet of the car.
Holding him, I watched us both in the mirror for a moment. We could have been a zany couple in a photo booth. I listened to our uneven breathing, arrhythmical, out of time.
I could see it now, everything made sense. No need for charades. I fell back into the back seat, broke the spell.
“Oh, sod you, Tobes. It’s only a bit of pipe.”
And I threw it into the front passenger seat.
15
There was something of a tristesse in the air as Toby leaned on his forearms across the table from me. We were in his flat in West Jerusalem. Modern, a sort of designer version of the one I’d been slammed up in. Net curtains over floor-length windows leading to a tiny balcony. Utilitarian and very male.
I remember wondering, for the first time, if he might be gay. A small hall, this sitting room, a low red sofa against the wall facing a flat-screen TV and this table against the window, a tiny kitchen behind Toby, a small bedroom, I guessed, behind me, which would have a neatly made bed smelling of washing powder, a half-read thick novel and a bottle of mineral water. A room his mother would recognise as his.
We’d driven down from Nazareth without saying much. He was still feeling shaky and resentful, evidently, and was trying to regain some dignity. I played with his mobile phone. I wasn’t sure if he could use it to call his office without me knowing and I wanted to answer it if it rang.
I’d told him I’d tell him everything when we got to Jerusalem and made sure he wasn’t planning to drive down through the West Bank.
I’d said, “I’ll bring you up to date,” like a schoolteacher or a sales rep. It sounded administrative.
It would go like this: As far as my time allocation has gone, Toby, I’ve spent the last month or so largely incarcerated in a room in a
