His mouth – wide hard-cut curves, like mine – has tightened. He says, ‘This obviously means a lot to you.’
He leaves space for me to take the bait. I don’t.
‘All right. I’ll tell the journalist I was mistaken.’ He nods at the sofa. ‘Now may I sit down?’
The cheeky fuck is already moving towards my sofa. ‘Great,’ I say. I lift the gun and point it at him again. ‘You can go now.’
That startles him. ‘But your questions. Don’t you want to know—’
‘Nope. Off you go.’
He doesn’t move. ‘We said half an hour.’
‘I’m finished early.’
‘Half an hour. That was the agreement.’
I laugh out loud. ‘You should’ve got it in writing. Fuck off. Don’t come back.’
His jaw sets. ‘If you’re trying to hurt me—’
‘I’m trying to get you out of my gaff. If I want to hurt you, I’ll use this.’ I move my chin at the gun. ‘Go on.’
For a second I think I’m going to have to do it. He’s not used to backing down. Funny, that: neither am I.
I see the moment when he realises I’ll do it. It widens his eyes and he eases back a step, towards the door, but he’s not done. ‘I understand that this has been a shock. Believe me, this wasn’t the way I would have chosen to— Let me leave you my card. When you feel differently—’
His hand’s going to his breast pocket. ‘No,’ I say, and train my gun on that hand till it stops moving. ‘We’re done. If I ever see you again, I’m gonna shoot you dead. Then I’ll explain how terrified I was of my stalker, my friend Steve will back me up, and I’ll sell the story of our tragic misunderstanding to your journalist pal for big bucks.’
Slowly his hand moves away from his pocket. He says, ‘You’re not what I visualised.’
‘No shit,’ I say. ‘Bye.’
For a moment he stands there in the middle of my sitting room, staring at my sofa without seeing it, like he can’t get a hold of what comes next or how to do it. He doesn’t look like the spit of me, not any more. He looks like some middle-aged guy who’s spent too long, the last few days, standing in the cold and imagining.
In the end he moves. With the door open he turns and I think he’s going to say something, but he just nods and steps out into the night.
I go to the doorway and watch him to the top of the road. His hat is under the street lamp, rolling a little in the rising wind; he bends to pick it up like his back hurts, dusts it off and keeps walking, out of the light and around the corner. He doesn’t look back again.
I wait five minutes, then another five, to make sure he’s well gone. My hands are shaking – the cold is hitting me – and I make sure my gun’s pointing behind me, into the house. When I’m positive he’s not going to try coming back, I holster up and ring Steve.
He picks up fast. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m grand. Where are you?’
‘I’m only in the pub round the corner – what’s it called, the Something Inn. I thought just in case – I mean, I know you’re well able, but . . . Is he, like, still there? Or . . . ?’
He wants to know if I’ve got a corpse on my sitting-room floor. ‘He left. Can you come back here?’
‘Yeah,’ Steve says, too promptly – now the little spa thinks I want to cry on his shoulder. ‘Be there in five.’
He’s hurrying down the road in three, wind grabbing at his scarf. ‘Jesus, relax the kacks,’ I say, opening the door for him. ‘The gaff isn’t on fire.’
‘You OK?’
‘Like I already said. I’m grand. Did you leave your pint?’
‘I did, yeah. I thought—’
His hair is sticking out sideways, all orange and urgent. ‘You bleeding drama queen, you,’ I say. ‘Want a drink to make up for it?’
‘Sure. Thanks.’
I head into the kitchen and go for the booze cupboard. ‘Whiskey OK?’
‘Yeah, fine.’ Steve hangs in the doorway and has a good look around the room, to avoid looking at me. He says, to the kitchen window, ‘I saw him. His face, like.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Me too.’
Steve waits for me to say something else. I say, ‘Ice?’
‘Yeah. Please.’ He watches me set out glasses and pour – my hands are rock-steady again. ‘Did you . . . ? I mean, are you going to see him again?’
I pass him a glass. ‘I’m guessing no. I told him if I do, I’ll shoot him.’
The loud, startled snort that escapes Steve makes me realise how it sounds, and all of a sudden I’m laughing too. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Steve says, through a wave of laughter. ‘I don’t think that went the way he was planning.’
That makes me worse. ‘The poor fucker. I’d almost feel sorry for him, you know that?’
‘Seriously?’
‘No. I hope he shat himself.’ That leaves the pair of us helpless, leaning against walls. I wipe my eyes, knock back my whiskey and pour myself another. ‘Here,’ I say, holding out my hand for Steve’s glass. ‘You’ve earned it. I’d say you thought I wanted your help to dispose of a body, did you?’
Steve chokes halfway through his shot and doubles over, which sets me off again. He spills half of it, and my whiskey is too good to waste, but I don’t care. I feel better than I have in a long time. ‘The state of you,’ I say, whipping the glass off him. ‘You need to learn to hold your drink. Here.’ I hand him his refill and head for the sofa.
‘You genuinely are grand,’ Steve says, turning serious and giving me a proper once-over. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Told you.’ I lean back into the cushions and take a sip of my booze, tasting it properly this time. I can feel things shifting, in the back corners of my head: a change in the angles of light, weights rebalancing. Maybe tomorrow when I ring my ma, I’ll tell her how I spent my evening. Now that ought to get a reaction.
Steve says, ‘Then . . . ?’ Meaning, Then what am I doing here?
I sit up. I say, and I’ve gone sober too, ‘Something’s after hitting me. About the case.’
That moment, when my vision slid and stuttered and I saw what Aislinn was chasing, in all its miraculous excruciating glow. In that moment I saw what me and Steve should have spotted a good twenty-four hours ago: what Aislinn saw when her chat with Gary sent her Daddy daydream splattering across the floor. When that soothing lifeline voice of Gary’s reached her, in the middle of the wreckage. She saw the obvious next place to look.
Steve takes the other end of the sofa. He balances his glass between his fingers, not drinking, and watches me.
I say, ‘Remember what Gary said, on the phone? He told Aislinn her da was dead, and she went to bits. So he kept talking, to calm her down: went on about how much her da had loved her, how he was obviously a great guy. Does that sound like it’d put her off missing her da? Make her go, Ah, what the hell, I’ll just leave it?’
‘Nah. Someone like her, that’d make her feel like she couldn’t let go; there had to be something there worth finding. That’s what I’ve been saying.’
‘Remember what else Gary said to her? He went on about the guys working the case. How they were good Ds, how thorough they’d been. How if there was anything to find, they’d have found it.’