"Who's Archie the driver?"
She forgot him for a while, preferring to stare at the fire and sip her coffee. Her shivering had stopped. Once, she winced and drew in her shoulders, but it was her memory, not the cold, that was troubling her. "Jesus," she whispered. "Thomas, what do I do?"
"Who's Archie?"
"In our village. He drove an ambulance for the local hospital. Everyone loved Archie the driver. He came to all the point-to-points and looked after people if they were hurt. He scraped up the bodies at the kids' gymkhanas, everything. Nice Archie. Then there was an ambulance strike, and Archie went and picketed the hospital gates and wouldn't let in the casualties because he said the drivers were all blacklegs. And Mrs. Luxome, who cleaned for the Priors, died because he wouldn't let her in." Another shudder passed over her. "Do you always have a fire? Seems silly, a fire in the tropics."
"You have them at Crystal."
"He really likes you. You know that?"
"Yes."
"You're his son or something. I kept telling him to get rid of you. I felt you coming closer, and I couldn't stop you. You're such a creep. He doesn't seem to see it. Perhaps he doesn't want to. I suppose it's Dan. You saved Dan. Still, that doesn't last forever, does it?" She drank. "Then you think: Okay, fuck it. If he won't see what's happening under his nose, that's his tough luck. Corky's warned him. So's Sandy. He doesn't listen to them."
"Why've you been going through his papers?"
"Caro told me a whole lot of stuff about him. Dreadful things. It wasn't fair. I knew some of it already. I'd tried not to, but you can't help it. Things people say at parties. Things Dan picks up. Those dreadful bankers, boasting. I can't judge people. Not me. I always think I'm in the hot seat, not them. The trouble is, we're so bloody straight. My father is. He'd rather starve than cheat the taxman. Always paid his bills the day they came in. That's why he went bust. Other people didn't pay him, of course, but he never noticed that." She glanced at him. Her glance became a look. "Jesus," she whispered again.
"Did you find anything?"
She shook her head. "I couldn't, could I? I didn't know what to look for. So I thought, fuck it, and I asked him."
"You what?"
"I tackled him with it. One night after dinner. I said, 'Is it true you're a crook? Tell me. A girl's got a right to know.' "
Jonathan took a deep breath. "Well, that was honest at least," he said, with a careful smile. "How did Roper take it? Did he make a full confession, swear never to do wrong again, blame it all on his cruel childhood?"
"He went tight-faced."
"And said?"
"Said I should mind my bloody business."
Echoes of Sophie's account of her conversation with Freddie Hamid at the cemetery in Cairo invaded Jonathan's concentration.
"And you said it was your business?" he suggested.
"He said I wouldn't understand, even if he told me. I should shut up and not talk about things I didn't understand. Then he said, This isn't crime, this is politics. I said, what isn't crime? What's politics? Tell me the worst, I said. Give me the bottom line so that I know what I'm sharing."
"And Roper?" Jonathan asked.
"He says there isn't a bottom line. People like my father just think there is, which is why people like my father are suckers. He says he loves me and that's good enough. So I get angry and say. It may have been good enough for Eva Braun, but it isn't good enough for me. I thought he'd belt me. But he just took note. Nothing surprises him, do you know that? It's facts. One fact more, one fact less. Then you do the logical thing at the end of it."
Which was what he did to Sophie, thought Jonathan. "What about you?" he asked.
"What about me?" She wanted brandy. He hadn't any, so he gave her Scotch. "It's a lie," she said.
"What is?"
"What I'm living. Someone tells me who I am, and I believe them and go with it. That's what I do. I believe people. I can't help it. Now you come along and tell me I'm a mess, but that's not what he tells me. He says I'm his virtue. Me and Daniel, we're what it's all for. He said it straight out one night, in front of Corky." She took a gulp of Scotch. "Caro says he's pushing drugs. Did you know that? Some huge shipment, in exchange for arms and God knows what. We're not talking about sailing close to the wind. Not cutting a few corners or having a quiet joint at a party, she says. We're talking fully fledged, organised megacrime. She says I'm a gangster's moll ― that's another version of me I'm trying to sort through. It's a thrill a minute being me these days."
Her gaze was on him again, straight and unblinking. "I'm in deep shit," she said. "I walked into this with my eyes wide shut. I deserve everything I get. Just don't tell me I'm a mess. I can do the sermons for myself. Anyway, what the fuck are you up to? You're no paragon."
"What does Roper say I'm up to?"
"You got into some heavy trouble. But you're a good chap. He's fixing you up. He's sick of Corky bitching about you. But then he didn't catch you prowling in our bedroom, did he?" she said, flaring again. "Let's hear it from you."
He took a long time to answer. First he thought of Burr, then he thought of himself and all the rules against talking.
"I'm a volunteer," he said.
She pulled a sour face. "For the police?"
"Sort of."
"How much of you is you?"
"I'm waiting to find out."
"What will they do to him?"
"Catch him. Put him on trial. Lock him up."
"How can you volunteer for a job like that? Jesus."
No training covered this contingency. He gave himself time to think, and the silence, like the distance between them, seemed to join rather than divide them.
"It began with a girl," he said. He corrected himself. "A woman. Roper and another man arranged to have her killed. I felt responsible."
Shoulders hunched, the cape still gathered to her neck, she peered round the room, then back to him.
"Did you love her? The girl? The woman?"
"Yes." He smiled. "She was my virtue."
She took this in, uncertain whether to give it her approval.
"When you saved Daniel, at Mama's, was that a lie too?"
"Pretty much."
He watched it all going through her head: the revulsion, the struggling to understand, the mixed moralities of her upbringing.
"Dr. Marti said they nearly killed you," she said.
"I nearly killed them. I lost my temper. It was a play that went wrong."
"What was her name?"
"Sophie."
"I need to hear about her."
She meant here, in this house, now.
* * *
He took her up to the bedroom and lay alongside her without touching her while he told her about Sophie, and eventually she slept while he kept watch. She woke and wanted soda water, so he fetched some from the fridge. Then at five o'clock, before it was light, he put on his jogging gear and led her back along the tunnel to the gatehouse, not letting her use the flashlight but making her walk a pace behind him on his left side, as if she were a raw recruit he was leading into battle. And at the gatehouse he put his head and shoulders right into the window for one of his chats with Marlow the night guard, while Jed flitted by, he hoped unseen.
His anxiety was not eased when he returned to find Amos the Rasta sitting on his doorstep, needing a cup of coffee.
"You have a fine, upliftin' experience with your soul last night, Mist' Thomas, sir?" he enquired, pouring four heaped spoonfuls of sugar into his cup.
"It was an evening like any other, Amos. How about you?"