“I was, but how could I turn down the chance of finding you?”
He saw her smile. “Finding me again,” she corrected. “Tell me, Mr. Elder, how’s your back?”
“Good as new.”
“Really?” She was still smiling. “You must be ready for another autograph, then. Something a bit more permanent.”
“Do you remember,” he said, “in Docklands, just before you gave me that final kick...?”
“You started to ask me a question.”
“That’s right. I want to ask it now. It’s important to me.” He paused. “It’s the reason I’ve been hunting you so long.”
“Go ahead and ask.”
He swallowed drily, licked his lips. His mouth felt coated with bad coffee.
“Paris, eight years ago, in June. A bomb went off in a shopping arcade. Was it you?”
She was silent for a tantalizing moment. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
“No, it was either you or it wasn’t.”
“No interviews allowed.” Her finger began to squeeze the trigger.
Elder called out: “Biddy, no!”
The use of her real name froze her for a second. A second was all Elder needed. The hand inside his jacket was already gripped around the Browning’s butt. He swung and fired, diving farther back into the darkness as he did so. He fired off three shots, stumbling backwards all the time, seeking safety in the shadows and the dustbins and the stacks of empty boxes. Three shots. None of them returned. He waited, listening. Some dogs had been startled awake and were barking in the distance. A window opened somewhere nearby.
“What the hell was that?” he heard a voice say. “Sounded like guns. Call the police, love.”
Yes, call the police. Slowly, Elder got to his feet and walked to the mouth of the alley, keeping close to the wall, his gun hand hanging at his side. Then he stuck his head out into the street.
And the cold metal mouth of a pistol touched his forehead.
Witch was standing there, smiling unsteadily. Her grip on the gun wasn’t steady either. She was wounded. He daren’t take his eyes off hers, but he could see a dark stain spreading across her right side. She placed the palm of her hand against it, then lifted the hand away, her fingers rubbing slickly against each other. Elder could smell the blood.
“Biddy,” he said, “you don’t hate me.” His whole head felt numb from the touch of the pistol against his brow. He felt dizzy, giddy. Witch’s smile grew wider.
“Hate you? Of course I don’t hate you. It’s just that I don’t want to...” she swallowed “...to disappoint you.” She fell against the shopfront, her gun arm dropping to her side. Elder took hold of her and eased her down so that she was sitting on the ground, legs in front of her, back resting against the shopfront, the same rag-doll posture in which she’d left her father. Only then did he remove the pistol from her hand. From the lack of resistance in her fingers he knew she was dying, if not already dead. He heard feet running, several pairs of feet, and calls.
“Down this way?”
“No, down here.”
“The car’s parked at Goodramgate.”
“Try The Shambles.”
“Take that street there...”
And then someone was standing in front of him.
“Found him!” the voice called. It belonged to a uniformed constable. The constable looked young, still in his teens. He stared in horror at the bloody bundle nestling against Dominic Elder.
“Is she...?”
And now more footsteps. “Dominic! Are you all right?”
Joyce crouched down in front of him, her eyes finding a level with his. He nodded.
“I’m fine, Joyce. Really.” He looked up. Greenleaf was standing there, too, now, pistol in his hand, not looking at Elder but at Witch.
“Here she is, John,” said Elder, still holding the unmoving body. “Here’s what all the fuss was about. A kid who didn’t like her dad.”
“Her dad?”
“Jonathan Barker. He’s on the wall between Goodramgate and the Minster.”
“Not alive, I presume?”
“Not alive, no.” Elder looked down at Witch again. She looked like Christine Jones. Now, she would always look like Christine Jones in his mind, just as for two years she’d looked like a down-and-out. He wondered what she looked like really. He wondered if even she knew.
Greenleaf holstered his gun. “We call them ‘domestics’ on the force,” he said. “Family fallings-out...”
“That’s what this was, then,” said Elder, letting the body go and rising slowly to his feet. “A domestic.”
Joyce Parry slipped her arm around his waist. Her fingers spread out across his back. His back had no feeling at all.
Departure
Doyle kept his head bandaged for a few days, even though the doctors had told him he needn’t bother. But he said he liked the way it made him look, and so did his girlfriend.
“She says I look like a war hero.”
“Or a lobotomy patient,” added Greenleaf.
Elder laughed. They were standing in the East End boxing club, which again had been hired for one of Doyle’s by now notorious parties. The French lager was piled high in cardboard boxes of forty-eight bottles per box. The punching bags were in use, as were the parallel bars.
“He’s sharp, isn’t he, Dom?” said Doyle, nodding towards Greenleaf.
Elder nodded. “But how do you feel really, Doyle?”
“Oh, I’m fine. Just a spot of amnesia.”
“Oh?”
“I seem to have forgotten all my character defects. Ay-ay, here comes lover boy.”
They turned towards the door. Barclay was walking tall, having just arranged by phone with Dominique that he’d be spending next weekend in Paris with her.
“Mama’s idea,” she’d said, but he hadn’t believed it.
Doyle had turned away from Barclay and towards the table. When he turned around again, he was holding a bottle of beer.
“There you go, Mikey. You don’t need a bottle opener, just twist the top.”
“Right, cheers,” said Barclay. Greenleaf knew what was coming. As Barclay twisted the bottle top, a welt of foam burst from the bottle and sprayed his shirt.
Doyle tutted. “Still a bit lively from the trip.”
Later, while discussion raged as to which curry house should receive the party’s late-night custom, the one they’d used last time having said never again, Elder slipped away. He was going to hunt down a black taxi, but saw in the distance a seedily lit cab office, so started walking towards it.
“Stealing my car again?”
He turned and saw Barclay following him. And when he looked, he was indeed standing next to the white Ford Fiesta. Barclay unlocked the passenger door.
“Hop in, I’ll give you a lift.”
“You don’t know where I’m headed.”
“I’ll give you a lift there anyway.”
The trip took the best part of half an hour. At the end of it, Joyce would be waiting for him. Like last night and the night before. Tonight was their final night together: Tommy Bridges was going off on holiday and Elder’s garden needed him. But Joyce had some holiday time owing, too, and she was making plans to visit before the month was out. They’d see how it went. Now that Witch was behind him, maybe Dominic could relax a little. Maybe.
“A penny for them,” said Barclay.
“I’m wondering whether to envy you or not.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s hard to put into words without an overload of clichés.”
“Try anyway.”
“You’re just beginning, Michael.” Elder stopped abruptly. He couldn’t say it. Barclay nodded anyway.