“My rings!”
I used her as a doorstop against the heavy self-closing mechanism while I retrieved the saucerful of jewellery, tipping the contents into her cupped hands. I was intending to just shut the door behind her but, by the dazed way she was looking round, I reckoned she wouldn’t find her way back to her own room. I checked my key was still in my pocket and stepped out into the corridor with her. She instantly half-collapsed onto me.
“Need a hand?” I looked, finding, to my surprise, that Jamie was walking towards us from the direction of the stairs.
“Good timing,” he said. He held up a key. “Daz sent me up with this so you can tuck her in. How is she?”
“I’m not deaf, y’know,” Tess grumbled, lifting her head from my shoulder.
“Well you obviously didn’t hear them say ‘you’ve had enough’, did you?” I muttered under my breath.
Jamie grinned at me and slipped an arm around Tess, taking the weight. “You go ahead – number twelve,” he said. “I’ve got her.”
Still clutching her fistful of rings, Tess threw her arms round his neck and held on like it was the last slow dance, grinding her hips against him, head buried against his chest. Jamie didn’t necessarily look like he was upset by the experience.
By the time I’d found the right door, opened it and turned back, his hands had dropped to her skinny rump.
“Leave her alone.”
He looked up, eyebrows climbing at the stone-cold note in my voice. “Come on, Charlie, lighten up.”
“She’s drunk and she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” I said, frozen. Not an argument that works every time. I discarded it and tried another. “And I hardly think Daz is going to be overjoyed to find you doing the nasty with Tess when she’s supposed to be with him.”
“He don’t want me,” Tess said, muffled and mournful into the front of Jamie’s shirt. She lifted her head and gazed, sniffing, into his eyes. “You want me, don’t you, Gnasher?”
“No he doesn’t,” I said grimly, disengaging the pair of them and almost shoving her into the right room. She paddled backwards and sat down on the nearest of the two beds with a thump.
“Tha’s not fair,” she wailed. “You’ve got Sean an’ he’s gorgeous an’ now you want Gnasher as well, an’ I ‘aven’t got nobody.”
“That’s right, Tess. Goodnight,” I said cheerfully, and shut the door on her.
I turned to find Jamie was still grinning. “I really feel I should stay with her,” he said, “just to, erm, make sure she’s all right.”
“Leave her alone,” I repeated, knowing he was baiting me and rising to it anyway. “Because if she regrets what she’s done in the morning, I’ll be the first to back her up on it, understand?”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Whoa, OK, I’m sorry. I was only joking,” he said. “I didn’t think you even liked Tess.”
I rubbed a hand across my face, suddenly tired and flash-tempered. “What the fuck has that got to do with it?”
The smile finally disappeared. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and meant it this time. “I would never take advantage of a girl.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “What about Clare?”
He stared at me blankly for a moment. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the ten grand, Jamie.”
He swallowed but before he could reply we heard footsteps approaching and the murmur of voices. An elderly couple appeared, dressed up to the nines, and stopped outside a door further up the corridor while they hunted for their key.
Jamie waited until the door had closed behind the couple, then jerked his head towards the room opposite Tess’s. “Look,” he muttered, “let’s talk about this inside, yeah?”
He produced his own key out of his jeans pocket and shoved it into the lock. Inside, the room was very similar to mine, maybe a touch smaller and the twin beds were both singles. I recognised Paxo’s leathers hanging on the wardrobe door.
Jamie caught my glance. “No-one wants to share with William,” he said by way of explanation. “He snores like an industrial buzz saw. It’s bad enough being in the same building.”
There was a little nervous catch to his voice as he spoke, as though he’d suddenly realised that by inviting me in like this he’d potentially put himself in harm’s way.
I leaned my shoulder against the wall next to the doorway, blocking his escape route.
“Why did you need the ten thousand, Jamie?”
“Oh, erm, well, I wanted to buy a new bike and—”
“Don’t,” I said. The single-word command worked much better on Jamie than it had done on Sean. He shut up like I’d just hit the mute button on the remote control.
“Clare’s already told me that you came to her in trouble and she agreed to lend you the money,” I said. “All I want to know is why you needed it. The truth. What’s Daz got on you?”
“Daz?” Jamie squawked. “No, no, no. It’s not Daz who—”
He broke off, realising he’d been suckered, and gave me a smile of self-derision.
“OK,” I said, folding my arms. “Who is it?”
He moved over to the bed and sat down nearly as heavily as Tess had done, putting his knees on his elbows and slowly rubbing his face with both hands.
“Look, I borrowed some money about a month ago from Eamonn.”
“Eamonn?” I said, trying to tone down the disbelief in my voice. “Everyone’s favourite philanthropist?”
He lifted his head, flushing. “Yeah, I know that might seem stupid to you, but he’s been an OK kind of a guy, y’know? Up ‘til then, anyway. I-I needed some dosh and Mum wouldn’t lend it to me. Eamonn overheard one of the rows we had about it and the next day he just handed it to me – in cash, just like that.”
“And you didn’t think to ask what he might want in return for this princely gesture?”
“Of course I did,” he said, scowling. “He just fobbed me off, y’know?”
“How long did it take him to change his mind?”
Jamie’s scowl deepened. “Couple of weeks,” he muttered. “He was apologetic at first, then started getting creepy about Mum, said as how he didn’t want this to hurt her.”
“In what way?”
“Fuck me, I don’t know! You think I wanted him to spell it out for me?”
“And that’s when you went to Clare.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Why did you want Clare to meet you at Devil’s Bridge? Why not just go to the house?”
Jamie looked glum. “I didn’t want Dad to know about it and I didn’t know he wasn’t at home until—” he broke off, shrugged, “—well, afterwards.”
“And did Eamonn know about this?”
“Probably – through Mum.”
I was silent for a moment, considering. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that Eamonn went after Clare – and Slick – because he wanted to keep you in his debt, is there?” I asked mildly.