He shook his head.
‘Was he a big drinker back then?’
He paused to consider this. ‘That would be something new …’
I asked Short for his whereabouts on Monday morning. The day I’d interviewed Coyle in his apartment and heard someone in the next room. He’d been at work and seemed quite happy to prove it.
I left him, wondering again who it had been.
At the time I’d thought of Aneesa, but everything I’d learned about Coyle since implied that he was off women for good. Directionless, I wondered if I was just pulling at this thread because I didn’t have a lover of my own.
3
It was late afternoon and the heat was finally starting to ease. I went in the direction of The Temple. I wasn’t happy about my phone call with Sian earlier, someone I still thought of as a friend, and I wondered if I could improve on it. Selfishly, I wondered if I might arrive before Ricky, her new boyfriend, and make it easier for us to talk. She’d seemed surprised that I was happy to meet him, and I tried to think what she wanted to see me for. I tried not to imagine it was about us, our relationship, but that aside, what else was there to say?
In the closing weeks of our living together I’d tried to get sober. To eliminate the pharmacy of uppers and downers I depended on. I had a few days of nerve-shredding withdrawals then started to feel better, physically and mentally. I looked at the beautiful, funny young woman in front of me and thought she was all I needed. My mind cleared and I started to really see Sian. The problem was that I started to see myself, too. Memories began to surface that felt like they belonged in another life, to another man. For years I’d remembered flashes of my sister, just her in isolation, but now I saw the people who’d surrounded us as children. After years of blank, medicated sleep I began to have living, vivid dreams. They grew darker, more disturbing, until one day I woke up to Sian watching me fearfully from the far side of the bed.
The Temple, where she worked, was a favourite of mine beyond her rare, friendly face behind the bar. It was unaffiliated with any gang or drugs franchise in the city, it was too small and dark to represent a club alternative to party-goers, and it had a carefully curated jukebox. Best of all, Sutty was banned, creating a sanctuary for those days when he became unbearable. After our conversation earlier, this was one of them.
When I descended the steps I saw that the bar was quiet. Sian was serving a couple, chatting happily, and I waited until she was alone.
‘Hello, stranger,’ she said, pleasantly surprised. ‘I didn’t think you’d actually come.’ She was wearing her customary black with stark red lipstick. Her thick-rimmed glasses on the end of her nose.
She looked wonderful.
‘You said we needed to talk.’
‘I know, what was I thinking? Asking Aidan Waits to talk. When I hung up I thought you’d block my number as well as delete it.’ I didn’t say anything and she let me off the hook. ‘You’re early.’
‘It’s late for me. I haven’t been to bed yet.’ It was true. The night shift with Sutty, followed by my stake-out and break-in of Cartwright’s flat had made for a long day.
‘You’re not up to your old tricks again?’
I thought of the night before. If Cartwright hadn’t been arrested at departures, on his outbound flight, he’d be in the air by now. ‘All new tricks,’ I said.
She smiled but it faded from her face as she remembered what she wanted to talk to me about.
I sat at the bar. ‘So what’s up?’
She started to pour a beer. ‘I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you or not …’ I looked into her eyes and she made up her mind. ‘Well, there was some guy in here looking for you last night.’
I was surprised. ‘Looking for me?’
She watched me closely, like I must know what she was talking about. ‘Or, I guess, looking to find out stuff about you …’ She slid the beer across the bar.
‘Stuff like what?’
‘How often you come in, if we’re friends. He did it all in a roundabout way but he just seemed to be …’ she searched for the word, ‘fishing.’
‘Did you get his name?’
‘He didn’t give it. When I asked if he was a friend of yours he said you probably wouldn’t remember him, but that he thought he’d seen you in here the other day. Wondered if that was the Aidan Waits …’
I took a drink, thought about it. ‘Maybe that’s the truth? Even I had some friends once.’
‘You’ve still got friends,’ she said, with a flash of indignation. ‘Anyway, you’d remember this one …’
I waited.
‘… I would’ve felt sorry for him if he hadn’t been so weird about it. But there was something wrong with his face,’ she said. ‘The right-hand side. He had all these thick, overlapping scars and scabs. His mouth was all dry and chapped, and the eye socket … there wasn’t anything there.’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘He can’t help what he looks like, but he can help being a creep. I had this feeling he was proud of it, y’know? Or, like, knew the effect it had on people. The whole time we were talking, he kept that side of his face pointed at me, leaning right over the bar until we were almost touching.’
‘How old was he?’
‘Older than us, in his fifties maybe. He looked like he was in the life.’
‘A criminal?’ She nodded. ‘Guess I’ve met a few of those.’
‘He was stacked as well. Like, seriously built, and a head taller than you. When he leaned on the bar I saw all these shitty, washed-out tattoos on his forearms. Like those prison ones they do with hot biros. He saw me notice them and started asking about mine. If they covered my whole body, if I had any naughty ones …’
‘Shit, I’m sorry.’
‘So was he, I poured his Guinness down the sink. Anyway, it’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘Is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘He doesn’t sound like anyone I’ve put away. Or anyone I was ever friends with, either.’
‘It’s the second time he’s been here. The first was Sunday night, when you came for the lock-in, remember? He was trying to push inside but when I saw I didn’t know him I just said it was a private party.’ I thought about leaving the bar that night. Someone had been standing in the shadows, watching me. ‘Yesterday he came back, drank eight pints, sitting at that table, following me with his fucking dead eye. After a bit he came up and started asking about you.’
‘Did he pay by card?’
‘Cash …’
‘What did you say?’
‘Well after the weirdness about whether he knew you or not, and then the tattoo stuff as well, I just said Sorry, shug, I don’t really know him.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Turns out that wasn’t exactly a lie, though. He asked me how that sister of yours was doing …’ I looked at the bar but Sian must have seen my jaw tighten. ‘Yeah, that’s what my face must’ve looked like as well, since you told me you had no family. You said you grew up in care.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Who lies about something like that?’
When I looked at Sian again I could see a searching kind of pain in her eyes. I suddenly remembered it so well from our time together.
‘I did grow up in care,’ I said quietly. ‘That’s the truth. But I also had a sister, biologically. We were separated when we were very young.’
‘So why not tell me that?’
‘I don’t know, it didn’t seem worth saying.’
‘It wasn’t an omission, Aid. You lied. I really wish you hadn’t.’ I started to say something but she cut me off. ‘I really wish you hadn’t done it so well. I didn’t even guess. How old were you?’
‘I don’t know, eight or nine?’
‘So you had a sister for almost a third of your life and just forgot about her?’
‘I didn’t just forget—’