East of Innocence (32 page)

‘Who told you?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Of course it had been Xynthia, but there is no way I am going to tell Halliday that. She has suffered enough at his hands.

‘I’ll find your mum,’ he says. ‘I’ll kill her.’

‘Too late,’ I say. ‘She’s dead. And say anything more about her and I’ll put that wrench down your throat.’

Halliday thinks about saying something, changes his mind. You don’t get to where he’s got without a sharp instinct for self-preservation.

‘But she left me some money,’ I say. ‘And you know what I did with it?’ No answer. ‘I bought this place.’ I smile. ‘Oops.’

‘You fucking did what?’

‘So I suggest you’re nice to me. Because if anything happens to me, like, I get hit by a car, or fall off a balcony, even if I die of natural causes, this place is getting donated to the Essex Police Force. And the first thing they’ll do, if they read my will properly, which they will do, is get the jackhammers out.’ I am pacing now, and Halliday is following me with his eyes from the floor where he is sitting. ‘The second thing they’ll do is lock you up and throw away the fucking key.’

Halliday shakes his head slowly, laughs softly to himself. ‘Oh, son. Oh dear.’

His attempt to patronise me only makes me more angry and I walk towards him, not thinking clearly, and hold him by his chin, jerk his head up so that he is looking at me. I do not know what to do, and cast about with my eyes. I see the wrench and I pull Halliday across the floor towards it, my hand around his neck. I do not notice his weight; it is as if I am dragging an insignificant piece of luggage. I pick the wrench up and Halliday, for the first time since he arrived, looks genuinely scared.

I think of my mother and her miserable, desolate life, which was all down to this man and his indifference to suffering, his intrinsic lack of humanity, and I desperately want to make him feel something, experience some of the pain he caused my mother and me. I take his wrist and press it to the floor. He is too old to offer much resistance and I pick up the wrench with my other hand and lift it and bring it down on his fingers, once, twice, three times and he is screaming and screaming and it is only then that I realise that I am crying and I don’t know how long for. I throw the wrench away and walk out, past a moaning Eddie and the unmoving body of Halliday’s ineffective muscle, leaving Halliday bellowing in rage and holding up his wrecked fingers, splay-legged on the floor like a child that’s had its toys taken away. Baldwin may be dead. But I have just made an enemy for life.

33

EVEN THOUGH IT
is not warm, we are sitting outside the clubhouse because inside Ray has had one too many and started telling his usual lies, before moving on to his favourite subject of immigration. Gabe is drinking Coke and Maria has a glass of wine. Gabe and I have just handed a supposedly up-and-coming doubles pair the battering of their lives and are basking in the realisation that we still have, perhaps, something to offer the game of tennis. Maria is watching us with amusement; boys who can only find self-worth in handing out beatings. She is more right than she knows.

‘Nice shot,’ I say.

‘Which one?’ says Maria, who clearly appreciated our performance despite herself.

‘Gabe knows which one,’ I say.

When I was fourteen, I was challenged to a fight by a boy two years above me, a challenge that involved not only my facing up to the prospect of going toe-to-toe with somebody who outweighed me by over two stone, but also a bus journey across town to the venue of his choice; a clearing in
the wooded land of a local park, frequented by drunks and littered with beer cans and the remnants of old fires. I told nobody about the fight and turned up expecting to be battered; in the event, I was not far wrong. But I put in some decent shots myself and it ended with me more or less on my feet. After the older boy and his entourage had left, I was using dry leaves to stem the blood from my nose when, from the higher wooded ground, I saw Gabe sauntering down towards me. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You didn’t think I’d look out for you?’

Now Gabe finishes his Coke and gives us a quick goodbye, before disappearing into the gathering darkness. We watch him go because we both know that, once he has gone, it will be just us.

‘He looks better,’ says Maria. ‘Not quite so mental.’

‘Yeah.’ It’s true that the last week has seen a transformation in Gabe. I have heard speculation that he is seeing somebody, but I have no doubt that the truth is darker. Gabe once told me that, when he was in the Army, he spent six months on attachment to a reconnaissance unit where he was taught infiltration techniques, how to lie in one position for days and how to pick off targets at long range, what he described as the zen of sniping. The bullet that killed Baldwin was a 7.62 NATO round, the same used by the British Army. I will never ask Gabe if he shot Baldwin; what would be the point? I know him too well, have known him too long; I know he did it, and he knows that I know. Any mention would only embarrass him and compromise our tacit acknowledgement. He will always look out for me.

But one consequence of his act is that he seems happier than he has for weeks. I know that Gabe loved war, loved the concept of taking lives for the greater good, however abhorrent that idea is to most of us. Perhaps he has got his temporary fix. But his journey did not end with that shot. I have the feeling that it has only just begun, and I cannot help but wonder if it can possibly end happily.

Maria and I sit in an uncomfortable, charged silence, and she shivers as a cold wind blows across the dark courts. It is now a week since Baldwin was shot but the papers are still full of his death, and theories about his involvement in Rosie O’Shaughnessy’s murder. It has been speculated that he was killed for what he did to her, and I suppose that, in a way, he was; ultimately, he brought his death upon himself. Even as I think it, I wonder if I am being deliberately glib, simplifying the story to absolve myself of any guilt. But at the same time, I do not care too much. I am no supporter of the death penalty, yet I cannot help but think that the world is a far better place for his killing. It is a hypocrisy that I am comfortable with.

‘I was thinking,’ I say.

‘Steady,’ says Maria.

‘I’m sorry about before, when we talked. About going out.’

‘Oh,’ says Maria, and looks down at her glass, swirls it.

‘I’m not an easy person to live with,’ I say. ‘I can be difficult.’

Maria looks at me and her eyes are wide and candid and lovely. ‘Everybody can be difficult.’

‘I wouldn’t want to hurt you.’

‘It’s just a date, you moron,’ she says. ‘Tell you what. If you upset me, I’ll call a taxi.’

I smile at her easy pragmatism. She is right. Why does everything have to be so complicated? ‘Would you like to go to dinner with me?’ I say.

‘When?’

‘Now.’

She downs her drink easily, sets it down exaggeratedly hard on the outside table. ‘Where are you parked?’

We get up and she picks up her bag and we walk towards the exit to the tennis club, between dark hedges and into the yellow gleam of a streetlight, and somewhere along the way she puts her arm through mine and for the first time in a long time I think that things might really be looking up.