Blind Date (35 page)

So, she
was drunk then; arseholed and serve her right; he would not mind seeing that, either, but he knew it was not her. It could be Flynn with his precious third key, doing a speculative survey of the inhabitants. Joe shot off the futon, then sat down again with such abruptness, the shock made him dizzy and he obeyed a perverse instinct to lie back and close his eyes again.

T
he half-open door to the room creaked. Joe could smell the uncertainty and alien aftershave of a man coming forwards. Standing over him, staring at him, breathing heavily. Joe had a desperate desire to keep his eyes squeezed shut, but that was impossible. There was the crinkly noise of stiff cellophane and the cutting edge of sweet scent, perfume, natural and unnatural, unequally mixed.

Christ almighty. Michael Jacobi with a bouquet of flowers in hand. An old mate. Joe studied that face in the pale light from the window, his own eyes still glazed with sleep. Cleft chin, a hook on the end of each eyebrow … why had he ever doubted? A face he had so often wanted to photograph for all its intelligent vacancy. The clock face which covered a mechanical mind with no judgement of its own. Emminently loyal, highly employable.

Joe continued to look at the face as if they had all the time in the world. Never quite been able to make you out, Mike, old mate. Such an utterly consistent fellow with the manners of a gentleman and the imagination of a sparrow. You never seem to do anything rash and you never said anything remotely original. In the early days at the same firm, Jack adored you: you listened to him, while someone like me avoided him and his constant whinging, and he was sacked, and you rose, and I left and stood still. Jack always made a man feel guilty, didn't he, Mike? You didn't seem to mind that he needed too much, he never really listened. You listen without contributing; take it all in like a sponge and then make a pronouncement. I would never have thought I would be afraid of you, but I am, now. Joe could scarcely blink, licked his dry lips.

Michael was
strong, Joe remembered with the clarity of fear. He had that muscular strength which came from mindless hours in a gym, kickboxing and hefting weights. He was slightly awkward in movement, hated dancing, preferred to watch. They had joked, Rob and he, that Mike would be more at home with the prescribed steps of a Viennese waltz. There was no spontaneity in the man, apart from the smile, which might not have been spontaneous at all. A slow, uncertain grin, more like a grimace, split Michael's features now, as if he was suddenly uncertain of what else to do. It put the other, amiable smile, into context.

“Wasn't expecting you, friend,” Joe murmured, unable to smile himself. His heart was galloping, fit to burst out of his chest and assume a life of its own.

“Where is she?” Michael's voice was polite and insistent, like someone trained to answer a telephone complaint line.

“Search me, mate.”

The smile had vanished. Michael was looking at the champagne bottle and the overturned glass on the rug. It seemed to explain something and make him nod, disapprovingly. He picked up the bottle, turned it upside down and let the contents dribble out onto the floor, then he continued to hold it by the neck. If that connects with my head, Joe was thinking, I do not know which will break first.

“Where is she?”

“Told you, mate, I don't know.”

What the hell were they doing? Joe had an overpowering sense of the ridiculous, but he was mortally afraid, more than he had ever been in his life. Bottle: weapon. No-one had ever found the weapon used on Emma and the girl, Angela. The something used to make the preliminary cracks before he used his feet to kick and crunch, and a knife to stab. He must enjoy the sound he made. A bottle could be washed, taken away, left innocuously where it was found. Bleached, to sear it clean. Did he have a preference? Would the bottle have to be green-coloured glass? Could it be blue?

He felt it connect against the side of his head with a flash of pain, rolled away over the futon and dropped to the floor on the other side, startled by his own speed. He was bigger by far than Michael, stronger, but he was clumsy, less agile. Smaller men make better fighters, the silly cliche ran through his mind, reminding him of weakness. He could not replicate the strength born of fury, glimpsed in Michael's sapphire eyes. Nor could he avoid the second and third blows, deflected but crunching against his collar bone. Crack, rolling away, crack. A foot connected with his ribs before he got to his feet, panting, and they faced each other, circling like gladiators. The sweat beneath his armpits felt like grit: he could not breathe.

“Mike, stop it. What's up? What for?”

“Where
is she?”

Joe's feet connected with the cellophane wrapping of the flowers: he felt them underfoot, smelt a wave of appalling, sickly scent as he skidded. He felt utterly helpless: he had never initiated
violence or trained in combat—it was anathema to him—he could hug a man to death, that was all. He knew a momentary relief as, with eyes locked into his own, he watched Michael put down the bottle, gently and deliberately, as if he was going to need it again. It was shortlived relief. The other hand held the knife. Joe backed towards the door, kicking aside the bouquet. He felt for the doorjamb, sidled through and began to scramble up the stone steps. It was utterly dark on the inside of the tower; as dark as a well. Get up one level; get up and find the advantage of height. Find another door to close against him. But he knew as he moved that he was a fool all over again: he should have gone down and out into the night, instead of going on and up into a trap, like some stupid, thriller-movie fool. He knew these steps: he was faster, but one arm seemed useless and his blundering feet acted as a guide for his pursuer. He stumbled through the next door into the clock room, turned to face Michael, tripped on the laces of his boots, heard his knee hit the ground with another sickening crack and felt breath on the back of his neck, the arm round his throat. For one appalling moment, he thought Michael was going to kiss him, so close was the embrace. Say, “There, there, where does it hurt?” in a motherly voice: say it was all a joke in the same way he had tried to tell himself it was since Owl had spoken. No-one listened to Owl, either. He did not feel the sensation of the blade through his flannel shirt, only the force of it, like an almighty punch which knocked him forwards from his half-kneeling stance, onto his face, over the threshold. Then nothing but the thunderous rattle of breath.

T
here was barely space left in which to raise a foot and kick; Michael tried, once. Then the phone rang one level below and made him hesitate. He waited until the imperious echo of the ringing ceased. Please speak after the tone … then, as if compelled, he followed the sound of it, hurriedly. With one backward glance at the big body, felled like an ox, groaning without screaming, he was satisfied it was safe. Going down as if he knew who it was. Getting to the door of the room with the huge window, hearing the tail end of a familiar voice. His mother.

“ … so do
phone back, tomorrow, Elisabeth, dear. I've the perfect man for you. Just wait.
Just wait.”

Click. Burr.

Michael forgot where he was. Messages from Mother were always for him. He waited. Amused himself. Looked at the flowers on the floor, touched them with his foot, looked for a vase to put them in. He found a blue-speckled one and then decided, no, wrong colour, and put it away carefully. He checked her cupboards for cleansers and such, shook his head. He found the lavatory. Prowled; looking at books and hiding places. Always ask first. Waited.

Upstairs, Joe lay on the floor, clutching his side. He wondered about the pain and tried to pretend it did not exist. He opened his mouth to shout and found he could produce no sound. He tried to remember all over again what time it was. Found the saturation of his shirt, as he pressed it into the wound, terrifying, and more terrifying still, the thought of what would happen when Elisabeth came home and it was all his fault. His fault, his fault, his fault. The ticking of the clock came again into his imagination, in tune with his pulse. He was on fire, the wound corroding the whole of him, burning him with its own shame. Sorry Lizzie, what a fool, sorry. Then he began to crawl, like an uncertain child with a lolling head, across the wide desert of the floor.

P
eople did not always polish diamonds, even though they treasured them, they did not know how, nor cared. Matthew had learned this from Audrey. Five centuries ago, they would put a rough-cut diamond in a wedding ring, prizing it as an emblem purely because it was so marvellously hard. Not beautiful, simply harder than anything else, and it would sit in a precious metal setting looking like a frosted rock. So hard, it took a day, even now, to saw through a one-carat diamond and it was a series of skills, used in descending order, which made it brilliant. The cleaver would cleave it; the crossworker create the first eight facets determining the final shape; the brillianteur the rest. Even the half-cut diamond did not look like a rock, but it did not look as precious, either. It looked … ordinary.

Matthew knew
he was far, far too old to wet his bed. That had been a brief rite of passage of a different age, about the time when his memory began, treated at the time with bribery and reassurance. Now it would be regarded as a crime. He shuffled away from the dampness he had created, but there was too much, the discomfort was too extensive and the shame of lying near it was too great. But it was also a comfort, because it had woken him from the half-dream, and he could see, as he lay in the silence, broken only by the background whisper of the sea through the open window, that there were no footsteps, no immediate questions, nobody. The lovely, inhuman music of the sea lulled him, reminded him he was home and he began to breathe normally, to tell himself there would be no opening of the door and no face peering round as he pretended to be asleep.

He shifted away from the damp, to the very edge of the mattress, swung his feet onto the floor, felt under the pillow and felt for the light. The stones were sharp and cool and refused to be warmed. Eight of them, irregular, half-cut lumps. Maybe they were so cool because he refused to hold them for long enough to make them warmer: they seemed to sting the hot palms of his hands, stick to them and refuse to be dropped. A diamond will stick to grease, he remembered, although he could not see why on earth it should. Such little pieces of stuff, with metal glued on one end, each in the rough shape of a drop. On closer examination, three of them consisted of two smaller stones glued together, to give the same, rough shape as the rest. A couple were frosted. He was sure that some of them were pure glass: he was equally sure that most of them were something else. He dropped them back into the packet and put it under the pillow. There were other pieces of glass and crystal from his own collection which might look equally harmonious on the chandelier, making up the gaps no-one had yet noticed, but he wished, he wished, oh how he wished, he had never taken these off. These precious stones were too much of a responsibility. Better, he supposed, than doing what he had wanted to do. Smash the whole thing. Cut the rope which held it to the ceiling, let it fall, but that would not have damaged it enough. He could have dragged it outside, got a bulldozer and run over it again and again. Now that was childish. Tomorrow, they were supposed to clean it.

Matthew did
not know what had happened to his mother's rings. She had so many, mostly small and delicate. Someone had prized open his fist and taken them from him, gently, but brooking no argument when he had refused to part with them. It was not the same person who had looked round the door, shut it and gone away while the radio had blared downstairs, on that last day with Mummy in their house. It was another person, large and male, who wrapped him in a blanket and carried him away downstairs and out into a car, while he sobbed and clung and fought and yelled for his mother. Daddy's face, looming, puffy with shock and tears. The end of life as they knew it. Matthew's brow cleared. Daddy must have the rings, which Mummy had folded into his hands before sending his upstairs to bed. Yes. No. Maybe.

There was
an infinitesimal noise from the far corner of the room. It chilled him for a minute until he remembered. It was a tiny, scratchy, itch of a sound, less than the distant buzzing of a fly, but enough to dispel the last of the nightmare and his own dull ache of fury at Lizzie for not being there. He rushed across to the cardboard box, lined with newspaper and padded with tissue. Harry the Hedgehog had also wet the bed and that made Matthew feel a whole lot better. Harry was snuffling around, trying to find a way out, but he was half asleep and less than enthusiastic. Milk and yoghurt and excreta were trodden into his bedding, poor pet. Matthew removed Harry with infinite care, crooning, “Helooo, Harreee,” and set him down on the stack of newspapers next to his home. He told himself that yes of course Harry mark two was the same as Harry mark one, thrown out of the window, but like so many other things, he also knew it was a lie. Not one which mattered and certainly one worth preserving. This Harry, found in the early hours of the morning and carried into the house as guests congregated for breakfast, had been observed by Granny without comment. There had been no challenge.

“We can do what we like, can't we, Harry?” he whispered, putting the creature back onto clean newspaper. It crapped again, it leaked all the time, he ignored the little red fleas. No-one would dare touch Harry. Matthew took the polythene envelope from beneath the pillow of his own bed and put it under Harry's. Let him crap on it. He did. Harry was not always easy to love. Matthew could see that. Nor was a boy who wet his bed.

They would
both be sent away, then. If there was money. If, if, if there was money and they knew it.

Stay in your room, Matt. Do
not
come out.

He looked at his clock with the funny faces on it. Ten to twelve. Hours before daylight.