He would enjoy his meetings with Mr Eshraq. He thought that he might enjoy conversing with Charlie Eshraq more than he had enjoyed talking to Matthew Furniss.
The clock was striking in the hall.
And the dog was restless, and sometimes there was the heavy scratching at the kitchen door, and sometimes there was the clamour of the animal shaking the big link chain on its throat. The dog wouldn't sleep, not while there were still people moving in the house and voices.
Mattie heard the clock.
The light was in his eyes. He was on the sofa and they had stripped his shoes off and they had heaved his feet, too, on to the sofa. His tie was off, and the shirt buttons were undone down to his navel. He could see nothing but the light. The light was directed from a few feet so that it shone directly into his face.
It was a long time since they had hit him, kicked him, but the light was in his face and the Major was behind him and holding his head so that he could not look away from the light, and the bastard Henry fucking Carter was behind the light.
Questions… the soft and gentle drip of questions. Always the questions, and so bloody tired… so hellishly tired. And the hands were on his head, and the light was in his eyes, and the questions dripped at his mind.
"Past all our bedtimes, Mattie. Just what you told them…?"
"A young man's life, Mattie, that's what we're talking about. So, what did you tell them…?"
"Nobody's going to blame you, Mattie, not if you come clean. What did you tell them…?"
"All that barbarian stuff, that's over, Mattie, no more call for that, and you're with friends now. What did you tell them…?"
Too tired to think, and too tired to speak, and his eyes burned in the light.
"I don't remember. I really don't remember."
"Got to remember, Mattie, because there is a life hanging on you remembering what you told them… "
Park watched the peace of Charlie Eshraq's sleep.
He wondered how it would be, to live with love. He was alone and he was without love. He was without Parrish, and Token, and Harlech, and Corinthian. He was without Ann.
He was away from what he knew. What he knew was behind him, back at the Lane. What he knew had been stripped from him on the nineteenth floor of Century House.
He did not know how to find love.
He thought that going to Bogota was a journey to escape from love
…
There was the sharp bleep of the alarm on Eshraq's wrist.
He watched as Eshraq stirred, then shook himself. Eshraq was rubbing hard at his eyes, and then sliding from his bed and going to the window. The curtain was dragged back.
There was a grey wash of early light in the room. Eshraq stretched.
"Pretty good morning to be starting a journey."
There was a glass of Scotch and water beside him. The Major sat on the sofa beside him. Henry was at the window. He had his ear cocked and he stared outside, and probably he was listening to the first shouted songs of the blackbirds.
It was the third Scotch that had been given to Mattie, and each had less water than before.
The Major had his arm, shirt-sleeved, loosely around Mattie's shoulder.
The Major smiled into Mattie's face.
"You know where you're going, Mattie, in a few hours?
You know where you'll be by lunch time? Do you know, Mattie?"
The slurred response. "I want to see a doctor, I want to go to bed and sleep, and then I want to go home."
"A magistrate's court, Mattie."
"Bollocks."
"The charge will be conspiracy to import heroin."
"Don't be so fucking silly, Major. It's too late at night for games."
"Charlie ran heroin. Heroin subsidized him. You ran Charlie. You're going down, old boy, going down for a long time."
And the arm was round his shoulder, and Mattie was trying to push himself up from the sofa and away from the calm of the voice in his ear, and he hadn't a prayer, hadn't the strength.
"Nothing to do with me."
"Fifteen years you'll get. Very hard years, Mattie."
"Not me."
"You'll be in with the queers and the con artists and the GBH lads, in with them for fifteen years. It's all sewn up, Mattie. How's Mrs Furniss going to cope with that? Is she going to traipse up to the Scrubs every first Tuesday in the month? And your daughters. I doubt they'll come more than once or twice."
"I don't know anything about heroin, nothing, not at all."
"Ask the magistrate to believe you, Mattie… Ask him to believe that you didn't know how Charlie Eshraq, more or less a son to you, funded himself… and ask Mrs Furniss to believe that you didn't know. It'll break her, Mattie, you being inside. Think on it."
"It's just not true."
"She won't have a friend in the world. Have to sell up at Bibury, of course. Couldn't face the neighbours, could she?
Your neighbours'll be a bit foul, Mattie, the jokers in your cell, they have their pride and heroin they don't like."
"It's a lie, I know nothing about heroin."
"It's all been a lie, Mattie. It starts with the lie that you didn't name Charlie Eshraq… Did Eshraq fuck your daughters?"
The pause, the silence. Henry had turned. Henry looked at his watch, grimaced. The Major nodded, like he thought that he was nearly dry, close to home.
"Mattie, Charlie Eshraq was running heroin out of Iran when he was fucking your daughters. Do you reckon heroin came with the service, Mattie?"
"It's not, tell me that's not true."
There was the first shrill call of the birds.
"It's what I hear."
"God… "
"Pushed heroin to your daughters, Eshraq did."
"The truth;…? "
"It's you I want the truth from."
"Charlie gave that filthy stuff to my girls?"
"You've just had bad luck, Mattie, a long run of terrible luck."
There were tears running down Mattie's cheeks, and the hands that held the glass shook. The Major had raised his head and Henry could see his eyebrows aloft.
Carter said, from the window, "You named him, Mattie?"
"It wasn't my fault."
"No, Mattie, it wasn't. And nobody will hold it against you."
Henry came to the sofa. He had his notepad in his hand.
He wrote a single sentence and he put a pencil in Mattie's hand, and he watched the scrawled signature made. He buffeted off the hall table on his way to the telephone and there was pandemonium in the kitchen.
The Major was at the door of the lounge, on his way out.
It did not seem necessary for them to shake hands. Henry went back into the lounge. He went to Mattie. He took his arm and hoisted him, unsteady, to his feet.
"Can I go home?"
"I think that's a good idea… I'll drive you myself."
"Tell me that it wasn't true."
"Of course not, Mattie. It was an unforgivable trick. I am so very sorry."
Dawn was coming, and at first sight the day looked promising.
21
He was looking down from the window and into the yard.
There was a kid, ten or eleven years old, scrubbing at the windscreen, and Eshraq was hunched down by the front radiator screen and he already had the Turkish registration off and he was holding the Iranian plate in place while he screwed it tight. There were lights in the kitchens that backed on to the yard, and they threw shadows into the yard.
He was dressed and he was shaved when the telephone bell rang in the room. He was zipping shut his bag, and he had his passport and his wallet on the bed beside him, and the ticket for the flight back to Istanbul. The telephone in the room had not rung since they had arrived in Dogubeyezit.
Below him, Eshraq had the front plate secure, and was moving to the rear of the Transit. He was moving easily and casual in old jeans and trainer shoes and a service blue cotton shirt. And the telephone was still ringing.