He leaves it there. That carefully neutral voice, while he tries to work out, or decide, whether we’re still partners.
I don’t have time for fancy dancing. ‘Steve,’ I say. ‘Listen. I need a hand.’ It feels rough in my throat, but when I glance out the window, the guy is still there, motionless at the edge of the lamplight.
There’s a long second of silence. I shut my eyes.
Then Steve says, ‘OK. What’s up?’
His voice has thawed two notches, maybe three. It’s fucking ridiculous how relieved I am, but I don’t have time to deal with that either. ‘Some fucker’s been casing my gaff for the last few days,’ I say, ‘and I’ve had enough. I can’t go out there and get him myself; he’s got a clear line of sight on every route I can take, and if he sees me coming he’ll do a legger.’
Steve says, and he’s put everything else aside to focus on this, ‘But he’s not watching for me.’
‘That’s what I’m hoping.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘At the top of my road.’ Steve knows my gaff; he’s never been inside, but we’ve swung by to pick something up once or twice. ‘He was looking in my front window earlier on, and I’ve seen him down the laneway out the back, but he mostly hangs out at the corner. Tall guy, solid build, middle-aged, dark overcoat, trilby-type hat.’
I feel Steve clock the match to the guy who went over Aislinn’s wall. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘What do you want me to do with him?’
‘Bring him in here. I want a word with him.’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, tops.’ I can hear him moving already: pulling on shoes, or getting into a coat.
‘Ring me when you’re almost at my road. Let it ring once, then hang up.’
‘Right.’ Keys jingling; Steve’s ready. ‘Mind yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘See you soon.’
I put my phone in my pocket, sit back down on the sofa and click shite at random on my laptop. The window feels like fingernails drumming at the side of my head. I don’t look around. When my phone rings once, what feels like an hour later, I manage not to jump.
I stretch, stand up and wander over to the front door, out of sight of the window. I get out my gun and press my eye up against the peephole.
Darkness and the yellow door across the road, bulging insanely in the fisheye lens. The yappy little dog next door throwing a fit. Girls shrieking, somewhere far away. Then a fast jumble of footsteps coming closer, over the cobblestones.
I hold the doorknob and make myself wait till a wild flap of black rears up in the peephole. Then I whip the door open, two guys pressed close together stumble inside, and I slam the door behind them.
They trip on the rug, get their balance back and stagger to a standstill in the middle of my sitting room. Steve is gripping the other guy’s coat collar with one hand and twisting his arm up behind his back with the other. Big guy, black hair going grey – his hat’s gone missing somewhere along the way – long black overcoat. ‘Get off me—’
‘I’ve got him,’ I say, and point my gun at the guy’s head. Steve lets go and jumps back.
‘For God’s sake,’ the man says, and then he turns to face me and all three of us go still.
He wasn’t expecting the gun. I wasn’t expecting him. I was all ready for anything from a serial killer to one of our own, but not for this guy.
I’ve never seen him before, but I’ve seen everything about him, every day: the strong curve of his nose, the hooded dark eyes, the long black slashes of his eyebrows. For a second it feels like some fucked-up practical joke; my mind, skidding, grabbing for handholds, wonders if the squad wankers somehow organised this to wreck my head. He’s the spit of me.
Steve is staring back and forth between us. His hands are open by his sides, like he’s not sure what to do with them.
I say, ‘Steve. You can go.’ My lips are numb.
The man says, ‘Antoinette—’
‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll shoot you.’ I tighten my hands on the gun. He shuts up. ‘Steve: go home.’
Steve starts to ask, ‘Are you—’
‘Go. Now.’
After a moment he leaves, practically tiptoeing. The door closes softly behind him. Me and the guy are left looking at each other.
He adjusts his coat collar where Steve had a hold of it. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure who that was—’
‘I asked him to bring you in,’ I say. ‘I’ve had enough of you hanging around my road.’
He’s not fazed. ‘In that case, perhaps you both did me a favour. I’m not sure when I would have got up the momentum to knock on your door.’
His accent is educated English, with something else overlaid on top – Nordie, maybe Belfast. He hasn’t spent the last thirty-two years in a palace in Egypt or a nightclub in Brazil. He’s spent them a train ride away.
‘Have a good look around,’ I say. ‘You want the full tour?’
He’s examining my face, intensely enough that I twitch, wanting to smash in his nose with the gun butt to make him stop. He says, ‘You’re very like me. Do you understand that?’
‘I’m not blind,’ I say. ‘And I’m not stupid.’
That gets a tiny satisfied smile, like me not being an idiot is to his credit. ‘I never thought you would be.’
All that maths homework I saved up to drop at his feet. There’s a silence, while he waits for me to say something, or maybe throw myself into his arms. I don’t.
‘This is a very strange moment for me,’ he says. ‘I’ve been looking for you for almost a year.’
‘Wow. A whole year, yeah?’
‘I did consider making contact at the beginning. I give you my word, I did. But I didn’t know your name, and your mother had gone off the radar really very effectively. And at the time, given the various complications in my life, in many ways I felt you would be better off without—’
‘And now, what, you need a kidney?’
A thin smile. ‘The year before last, my mother and father died, within months of each other.’ A smaller pause, for me to say sorry for his loss or feel bereaved or fuck knows what. ‘Losing one’s parents causes an immense shift in perspective. It brought home to me the value of their presence within my life, on a much broader scale than I had ever understood it before: the value of being rooted within a greater story than one’s own. I became acutely aware, for the first time, just what I had deprived you of. As soon as I reached that realisation, I began looking for you.’
Those dark eyes, all intense and urgent and meaningful. No wonder my ma fell for it; she was only twenty. I’m not. The truth is he was feeling vulnerable all of a sudden, what with being next in line, and he needed someone who could make him feel like he wasn’t gonna vanish into nothing. ‘At one point I actually hired a private detective,’ he says, ‘but all I could give him was your mother’s name, and—’
‘You’ve found me now.’
‘As soon as I knew how to find you, I came. I booked a hotel in Dublin and drove down that very day.’