Half Moon Chambers (30 page)

He knelt over me. He pulled my shirt back,
flicked
with his tongue at the sensitive bony crest
of
my shoulder. Heat blazed through me, right
down
to the arches of my feet, my heels and toes
where
I was pushing against the flagstones. He
settled
his backside against my crotch. "You know
our
angels?" he whispered.

I did. They changed shifts twice a day, front
-
street
copper and back-street copper. "What about
them
?"

"Reckon they can see through that fence?"

"Don't think so. They'd only be bothered if
someone
came over it." If anybody did, I too was
ready
. Even once Val Foster had been sent down, I
knew
I'd still keep the watch. I'd always
have
Rowan's unguarded back for him. "Why?"

"You know why."

This garden was an unlikely Eden. I undid the
cord
of his pyjama bottoms, and a cat yowled
somewhere
off in the distance as if in appreciation.

Discarded beer tins littered the lawn. But the lilac
was
budding, flowerheads already formed. Here
we
were Rowan's painted young gods. He made
golden
vines spring for me out of the fence and the
walls
. He called up a divinity from my aching
flesh
--
drew in his breath with pleasure when my
cock
strained beneath my jeans. I hadn't fastened
all
the buttons in my haste to get downstairs, and
he
opened the three I had with tender
concentration
. "Look at you."

Look at us.
I couldn't get the words out but I
put
down a hand and drew his shaft against mine.

There was just enough streetlight and starlight to
see
. This far north you could have both, the city
never
vast enough to extinguish the stars. He
pushed
his fingers through mine, intertwining them,
and
we both closed our grip, completing the
circuit
. I arched my spine but he forbade me,
pressing
me down. "No. Don't hurt yourself. Just
hold
me, love. Hold us like that."

He rocked powerfully over me. His
movements
drove our tight-pressed cocks together
harder
still. I cried out, and the damn cat yowled
again
. "Takes an alleyway tomcat to know one," he
managed
, voice breaking up into laughter. I
couldn
't sort out the surge of arousal from the
impulse
to laugh back. It didn't matter. This was
daily
life with Rowan, where sex and absurdity
would
overlap, and nothing would be separate
from
anything else, and I wouldn't need to live in a
sterile
box up in the sky. I put my free hand round
the
back of his neck, buried my fingers in his hair.

When we kissed I was still laughing, and high
-
voltage
flashes of excitement burst in a storm all
up
and down my spine. I jerked my fist around the
place
of our conjoining. He took up the beat with
me
. Combined with the rocking it was almost
unbearable
, a tight-locked rack of pleasure I
couldn
't escape. He tore out of the kiss and I
thought
he would come: his head went back, his
first
wet heat spilling out across my hand. But then
he
leaned down over me again. He hid his face
against
my neck. "Fuck, I'm scared."

I could barely answer. Nothing was separate,
though
, nothing convenient. Sex ran hand in hand
with
fear and love. "What is it? Tomorrow? The
trial
?"

"No. Scared... to come this hard. Turns me
inside
out, Vince!" A shudder ran through him,
frantic
and huge. His breath exploded against my
ear
. "I can't. I can't!"

"You can. I've got you." But I wasn't sure on
my
own account. Too much, too hard, a wild heat
like
God trying to burst out through my mortal
flesh
. No help for either of us
--
I seized him,
dragged
his mouth back down. I stilled our double
grip
and we surged to mute immobility. His shaft
leapt
a bare heartbeat before mine. My yell would
have
woken the street
--
Orion would have heard
it
--
except that my tongue was deep in Rowan's
throat
, his own cry meeting it, joining it and
cancelling
it out. We climaxed in silence, jetting
over
one another's wrists. I couldn't bear the
sweetness
of it. Not that much, not that perfect
bestial
divinity, flesh and soul forged into one, and
no
idea where I ended and he began, barriers as
old
as my life crashing down...

Something in me burned away to dust. We
clung
to one another. His head was still bowed to
my
shoulder, his ribs heaving as his breath slowed.

I had to move, I knew. The air was dampening,
chilling
. My endless angry forward impulse had
burned
, my tireless will to be doing. Over the
years
it had driven me so far
--
out of my home,
onto
the streets in search of my own ideas of
justice
. I'd needed it, but now I looked back there
was
so much damn roadkill, so many things and
people
tossed aside. I couldn't make reparation.

Just now I couldn't do anything but hold my
beautiful
man and watch the sky begin to shimmer
with
a first trace of dawn. Tomorrow
--
courtrooms
, defence lawyers waiting to rip us
apart
. A fortnight after that, the hospital. I wanted
to
do it all, and I would, but just now I wanted to
be
still. There soon would be a dewfall frost.

Maybe it would sculpt us painlessly in ice. Maybe
we
could turn to stone and stay here in the garden,
the
lilac and the straggling ivy covering us, the
world
none the wiser.

Rowan stirred. He planted a big, wrung-out
kiss
to my brow. "Somewhere... in the midst of all
that
... I think your phone was ringing."

So much for the world.
I grunted, shifting my
backside
far enough to pull my mobile out of my
jeans
. The combined bells of Notre Dame
and
Westminster could have been pealing directly over
my
head. With a sense of creeping flashback I read
the
number off the screen. "It's my sister-in-law.
Er, Chrissy
--
my brother's girlfriend."

"Your brother Phil?"

I nodded. Phil was gone, part of my roadkill,
my
unredeemable past. Without him and his nimbus
of
chaos, I couldn't imagine why Chrissy would be
making
a small-hours call. I remembered our last
meeting
, and inwardly cringed. I couldn't think why
she
'd ever want to speak to me again. "I'd better
find
out what's wrong."

"Want me to go?"

"No. God, no."

He settled down on the bench at my side and
put
his arm around me. I hit callback and waited.

"Chrissy?"

"No. This is her mum. I'm just using her
phone
."

Fear grabbed me like a big fist. She'd been in
despair
when she'd stumbled out of my hospital
room
, and despair didn't help keep ex-junkies
clean
, no matter how hard they tried. Not that I'd
ever
checked. Not that I could even remember her
surname
. "Is she... Is she okay, Mrs..."

"Wilkinson," the tired voice finished for me,
letting
me off the hook. "You don't know me.
Chrissy's all right. But she's just had a baby, a little
girl
, and for some reason she can't rest until you
know
."

"A baby... Phil's?"

"Yes, Phil's, Vincent. There was a lot wrong
with
my lass, but not that."

"I'm sorry. No."

"Anyway, she says she knows you won't be
able
to come. But if you do want to visit your niece
at
some point, she says you'll be welcome. She's
still
at her old flat."

The line went dead. My fingers had gone
numb
--
I dropped the handset, and Rowan deftly
caught
it. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm an uncle again. Chrissy's had a
baby
. She must have been pregnant when I last saw
her
, but..." I tried to imagine her telling me then, in
the
midst of her rage and her grief. "It's a little girl.
Chrissy says I can see her."

"And... that's good, isn't it?"

It was good. But the night was spinning round
me
, convulsing with change. I leaned into Rowan's
warmth
. He was skinny, but no-one in the world
was
more solid, more blessedly bloody real. "It's
good
. Will you come with me? When... When the
trial
's over, and we're let out on the streets again."

"I'd love to. What's she called?"

"Who?"

"The baby. Your niece."

"I've no idea."

He chuckled, his breath warm in my hair.

"Oh, Vince, you are hopeless. You should've
asked
."

"I suppose so. Come with me, then, and make
sure
I don't screw up any more. Oh, and I want you
to
meet Jane. She'll love you. So will the kids.
Lily's the oldest. She's a firecracker, a right little
handful
, but she's so smart. She's..."

I wanted to go on. He was listening intently,
as
if he'd happily hear my family history, the bright
parts
and the dark, until I ran out of stories and
relations
. But something was crowding up my
throat
, a coppery pain, and I had to stop. I rested
my
brow on his shoulder. He moved to shield me.

"Okay, love," he said. "It'll all be all right. You'll
see
. Everything will be all right."

Chapter Eighteen

January

T
here was limited space in the Freeman
hospital
post-op. It was only coincidence that I'd
ended
up in my old room. But it wasn't helping.

The window framed the same group of
birches
and oaks whose summer foliage had
swayed
back and forth while I'd lain here wishing
death
on myself rather than get through my next five
minutes
of pain. Their pattern had become a
hieroglyph
for me of the unendurable. They were
stripped
of leaves today, but I could still read the
message
. The difference was that I didn't hurt now.

I didn't know if I still could.

Voices in the corridor. Both were familiar.

One
--
my surgeon
--
had just finished a long, stern
lecture
at my bedside. I'd kept my eyes closed but
apparently
I hadn't been kidding him, because he'd
expatiated
in full detail on the damage I would do
to
myself if I didn't at least try to move my newly
mended
spine. If I hadn't been pretending to sleep
,
I could have told him a thing or two, starting with
how
willing he'd be to rush in and find out
he
couldn
't move, or walk, or raise an erection for the
beautiful
new boyfriend with whom he'd been
setting
out on a new life. How soon he'd have
wanted
a final bloody verdict on that. He'd have
lain
like a bundle of leaf-stripped twigs in this
bed
, I reckoned, giving himself a last interval of
terrified
, blessed uncertainty.

"He came through the surgery fine,
DCI
Hodges. He should be awake and talking by now,
and
I do need him to try and get up. I'm not sure
what
the trouble is. He's quite unresponsive."

"Leave him to me."

Oh, great. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. I'd
have
rolled to face the wall but even that
--
my
success
or failure with that endeavour
--
would
have
sealed my fate. I didn't have to look to know
that
Bill had come to stand by my bed. He always
used
the same aftershave, given to him
each
Christmas by his daughter and faithfully worn even
though
he didn't like it.

"For God's sake, DS Carr. This isn't like
you
."

That didn't warrant a reply. Everything that
might
or might not have been
like me
had gone out
of
the window since last summer. No-one should
know
that better than Bill, who had watched the
transformation
and tried to employ what was left.

"The doc needs you to try and move. He said
you
responded to the pain test."

So would you, if someone jabbed you in the
toe
with the tip of a fucking scalpel.

"But that's not enough for them to tell if the
surgery
's worked. They need you on your feet. For
that
matter..." A pause, and a scrape of a plastic
chair
across lino. My heart sank
--
he was settling
down
. "For that matter, I need you functional too.
I'm not saying I could shove you back out with the
drug
squad, if you even wanted that. You'd have to
retrain
. But I've got a recruit for you."

I twitched. I hoped he hadn't seen. Jack and I
had
dodged recruits, the task of playing mentor to a
rookie
, ever since we'd won our posts at
Mansion
Street. If Bill was trying to get me out of bed, this
wasn
't the way to go about it.

"The guy's got me tearing my hair. I don't
know
how he qualified. He's good, but he's got an
attitude
on him you could bounce bloody stones
off
. He's practically a skinhead. Thinks everyone
who
ever touched so much as a joint ought to be
locked
up forever. I thought I'd try him on you."

My eyes flew open. "Why? Because I've got
experience
at being a prejudiced dickhead?"

The room was bright. The light stung me,
bringing
tears. There was my boss, arms folded,
beaming
in satisfaction. "I'd never have put it so
bluntly
. Good afternoon, Vince. Welcome back."

"Bill, you sod."

"Desperate times, son. Desperate measures."

"Does this rookie even exist?"

"I'm afraid he does. I'd have broken him to
you
gently, but the doc said you were
malingering
."

I was desperately thirsty. Now that he'd
forced
me to speak, my throat felt like a gravel pit.

I gestured at the water jug and he poured me a
glass
.

"There you go. Sit up a bit and you can have
some
."

That was a poor trick to try on a hospital
veteran
. Glaring at him, I scooped up the remote
control
--
I knew exactly where it was
--
and
pressed
the button to raise my back rest high
enough
. I thought for a second he was going to
move
the glass out of my reach, but he relented.

"All right. Here you go. Now, what's the
problem
?"

I drank cautiously. My throat was sore from
the
intubation. I could still taste anaesthetic. "Do I
really
... have to tell you?"

"Well, I wouldn't normally pull rank on an
injured
man, but take it as an order if you like.
Yes."

All right. He'd asked for it. There wasn't
much
point in hiding from him anyway. He'd been
close
by my side all through the Foster trial,
and
Rowan had been close by mine. Val Foster would
now
be enjoying the start of her second month in
captivity
, and Bill had kept watch over us both
while
we put her there. Whatever he'd thought
about
one of his coppers falling in love with a
witness
, he'd had the grace not to say it, and God
knew
Rowan and I had been discreet. Bill had
seen
us in private, though
--
moments snatched
between
one court session and the next. "I don't
bloody
want to know," I snarled. Bill only
frowned
at me, and I elaborated. "I don't want to
know
if I'm fixed
--
just in case I'm not."

"Yes. I see. Well, that makes as little sense as
anything
I've ever heard."

"You try it. No
--
never mind me. Try being
the
poor bastard stuck with me."

"Vince, I'm honestly trying to understand you
here
."

I knew he was. I took a deep breath. "All
right
. I lost Jack over this. That turned out... I want
to
say it turned out for the best, and I know how
weird
that sounds, but otherwise I'd never have
found
Rowan. But it's been too bloody much for
him
too." My voice cracked. I lifted my hands to
my
face in utter shame. Maybe kindly Bill would
put
my weakness down to the anaesthetic. "He's
gone
. I thought he'd be here when I woke up but...
of
course he isn't. How could I have asked him?
It's too much, if I'm broken from the bloody waist
down
. It's too much to ask of anyone."

Bill sat back. I observed this through a blur
between
my fingers. He was smiling faintly.

Desolation chilled me. For all his compassion, he
could
be a tough sod when he had to. "Oh, Vince."

"What?"

"First off
--
you lost Jack Monroe because he
couldn
't cope with having run out on you down on
the
Sunderland quays."

I choked faintly. Since Jack had confessed to
me
, I'd held his secret as tightly as a priest. "You
know
about that?"

"Yeah. I thought so all along
--
he was never
that
good of a liar. But he took me for a pint one
night
the other week, and out it all came. He said
he
'd already told you. As for him being lost
--
yes,
he
's going back to his Californian senator next
week
, but right now he's down in the cafeteria with
your
sister, her kids, Chrissy Wilkinson and your
baby
niece. They all came to see you, but of course
you
've been asleep. She's a bit of a poppet, that
little
one, isn't she?"

She was. Rowan and I had been to see her
and
Chrissy twice since the trial ended. She was
called
Suzi, in honour of Phil's lifelong rock
-
legend
crush on Suzi Quattro, and Chrissy had
informed
me with disgust that she most resembled
me
. In spite of this affliction she was cheerful and
affectionate
. In one world, the world I didn't dare
find
out was utterly gone, Chrissy had given us
permission
to add her to the troop of Jane's kids
and
take her out. Already I loved her, and just
now
I didn't give a damn. "Yeah. She's great. Did you...Did you hear from Rowan at all?"

"Would that be the poor bugger who's
crashed
out asleep next door because he sat up all
night
while you were in surgery? Oh, speak of the
devil
." A door creaked nearby, and Bill got to his
feet
. "Good luck with happy Harry, Rowan. He's
all
yours. I'm off to get some breakfast."

I kept my hands clamped to my face. That was
safest
. Rowan had his own scent too, a lot subtler
than
Bill's. It was oilpaint and turpentine from his
work
, salt like a warm sea breeze, the faintest
touch
of the dizzying musk that rose up when we
were
fucking and carried me off in its wings. I
breathed
it. I felt the shift of the mattress when he
sat
down by my side. I still wasn't wholly
convinced
of his presence, so when he took hold of
my
wrists and eased them down, I allowed it.

There he was. He had hollows under his eyes.

He was still flushed from sleep, his hair in spikes.

"I heard you talking to Bill," he said unsteadily,
not
letting go of my hands. "I stayed awake till you
were
round from the anaesthetic. Then I met Jane
and
the kids in the corridor, and Chrissy and Suzi,
and
I took them down and got them coffee, and I
came
back up, but you were still asleep. At least...
the
doc said you might be playing dead for a while.
To give yourself time to think."