These are not original thoughts, sure, but they are soothing ones. Because, once you really accept the hollowness of everything, it makes it an awful lot easier to kill someone.
To kill Kuldesh.
83
Ron rarely ventures North, but, whenever he does, he enjoys it. The nights out he had with the Yorkshire miners in 1984. The steel workers in County Durham. They could all drink the cockneys under the table. Three coppers once broke his ribs in a Nottingham police station. One rib each. Does Nottingham count as North? It does to Ron. They are currently heading to a motorway service station near Warwick, and even that counts as North. As a precaution he is wearing a thick jumper over his West Ham shirt. Pauline has recently been buying him clothes, because, as she says, ‘I have to be seen with you, darling, don’t I?’
‘You can’t rely on the food,’ says Joyce, unpacking a Tupperware box of chocolate hazelnut brownies. She, Elizabeth and Ibrahim are squished together in the back seat. Bogdan is driving. A steady 95mph so far.
Is Elizabeth asleep? She has her eyes closed, but Ron doubts it.
Donna and Chris are heading up separately. With SIO Regan. Apparently they are all friends now. You just never knew with coppers. Law unto themselves.
Elizabeth has told the police to be there by three p.m. But the deal will be done at two p.m., and Elizabeth will accept the consequences when the police find out she has lied.
Ron starts to think, ‘There never seem to be any consequences for Elizabeth,’ and then remembers himself. Grief scares him, Elizabeth’s grief particularly. To see her laid so low. To see that there was an iceberg finally able to sink her. You have to be so careful with love, that’s Ron’s take on the thing. One minute they’re buying you jumpers and smoking pot with you on the bowls lawn, the next minute you care, and your heart is not your own. He looks down at his jumper and smiles. He wouldn’t have chosen it himself in a million years, but what are you going to do?
‘Brownie, Ron?’ Joyce asks from the back seat.
‘Not for me,’ says Ron. He is saving himself for a full fry-up at the service station. He hopes there will be time.
‘Is it true that Pauline puts marijuana in her brownies?’ asks Joyce.
‘She does,’ says Ron. ‘Marijuana and coconut.’
‘I wonder if I should try marijuana,’ Joyce says.
‘It makes you very talkative,’ says Ibrahim.
‘Oh, perhaps I shouldn’t, then,’ says Joyce. ‘You barely get a word in as it is.’
Up ahead, Ron spies the long, covered walkway that spans the motorway. Grimy windows, and long-faded primary stripes. Bogdan leaves the fast lane for the first time in ninety miles, and arrows the car towards the service-station slip road.
‘We’re here!’ says Joyce.
Elizabeth opens her eyes. ‘What’s the time?’ she asks.
‘1.52,’ says Bogdan. ‘Like I told you it would be.’
Bogdan aims the car for a parking spot far enough from the exit to be discreet, and with a view of the covered walkway. Ron can smell the fry-up. He is aware that they are here for other reasons, but you’re allowed to have what Pauline calls a ‘side hustle’. Pauline’s ‘side hustle’ is selling used Iron Maiden drumsticks on eBay. She buys them in boxes of fifty from the music shop in Fairhaven.
Meanwhile, talking of boxes, the unmistakable figure of Garth appears through the grimy walkway windows.
‘Here we go,’ says Ron.
‘Good luck, everybody,’ says Bogdan.
84
Garth can feel the walkway shake as he strides across. It is rusting and unloved. He likes it. He has already pressed record on his phone. He knows the deal.
Since he threw Luca Buttaci from the roof of the car park, the police have been searching for him. Garth can see their point. They won’t catch him, not in this life, but they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t at least try. He reaches the steps at the end of the walkway. He smells cheap, fried food and urine. The downside of never complaining is that the British really do put up with a lot. Imagine this in Canada. Or Italy.
Italy might be where Garth goes next. A good place to lick your wounds, and Garth has wounds for the first time since he was a kid. He was all set to go last night, before Elizabeth found him at the house deep in the woods.
How on earth had Elizabeth found him? Garth has no idea, but he is glad that she did. She told him what she knew, and she told him what she wanted. Told him who had killed his wife, and told him how to get his revenge.
Garth walks past the toilets, past a man with a sad face and a briefcase playing an arcade machine, past a red-eyed woman pushing a stroller. He places a hand on her shoulder and says, ‘It’ll get easier, you’re doing a great job,’ and walks on. An old man sits hunched over a cardboard cup of coffee. Garth dips into his own pocket and gives the man a ten-pound note. ‘Get yourself some food, pops,’ he says. Garth finds kindness interesting. It’s not really his thing, but Samantha would have spoken to the mum, and would have given the old man money for food, so that’s the sort of thing Garth will do from now on.
And then Garth sees his wife’s killer. He sits down opposite her.
‘Hey, Nina,’ he says.
‘Garth,’ says Nina. ‘Thank you for meeting me.’
‘You have something I want,’ says Garth. ‘Let’s get this done quickly. I have to be out of the country and I’m guessing you do too?’
‘I don’t have to go anywhere,’ says Nina. ‘No one knows I have the box, except you. No one saw me steal it. And you don’t seem the type to tell. So I’m in the clear.’
Elizabeth told Garth about the theft. As soon as she’d known about the box, she’d had only two suspects: Nina, and her boss, a professor. A friend of Elizabeth had set off a fire alarm, another friend, a computer guy, had rigged up a little camera, and Nina had walked straight into her trap. A guy from the KGB has been tailing Nina ever since. They knew she had the box, but they had no evidence to prove that she’d killed Kuldesh to get it. Which is why Garth is here.
He’d rung Nina last night, told her he couldn’t find the box for love nor money, but, if she ever stumbled across it, he had a client who would pay handsomely for it. Which is actually true, but Garth knows he is not getting the box. Elizabeth wants it, and when she told him why, he happily agreed. Garth’s reward is seeing his wife’s killer go to jail. Ideally he would like to kill her, but Elizabeth is a bit too canny to let him get away with that. You have to know when you’ve met your match.
‘You have it?’ Garth asks.
Nina opens a bright blue IKEA bag at her feet. In the bag is the box.
‘Can I touch it?’ Garth asks.
‘Sure,’ says Nina. ‘But try anything and it leaves with me.’
Garth can’t help but laugh. He touches the box. It’s kind of a buzz. Samantha would have loved it, he knows that. They’re crazy, all of them, Samantha, Nina, Kuldesh. Childish, getting so excited about a box. Garth got excited about how much the box was worth, sure, but not about the box itself. So someone made it a long time ago? Get over yourself. So it has the eye of the devil? Ain’t no such thing, Garth knows that. The devils walk among us.
But Kuldesh had laid down his life for it, and Nina had killed for it. Samantha probably would have killed for it too, Garth has to accept that, but Nina got to her first. As soon as Nina worked out that Garth knew what the box was, she’d signed Samantha’s death warrant right then and there. And he’d gone off to eat a burger while she’d done it.