Luckily Sinead didn’t have to reply; her dad had turned away from the camera and was responding to a child’s distant voice. ‘We’ve got plenty of time. I’m speaking to Sinead at the minute. Go and brush your teeth and get your shoes on.’ Sinead watched her father as he listened to something else that her half-brother Freddy was saying. ‘I’ve no idea where it is. Go and ask your mum.’ He turned back to the camera.
Sinead said, ‘I should let you go. It sounds like you’ve got a lot going on there.’
John sighed, looked away from the camera, and tugged at his beard. ‘Listen Sinead, I really do hope you’ll come out here. I’m looking forward to us spending time together. I know it upset you that I missed Caitlin’s funeral, and believe me I wanted to make it happen, but it just… I don’t know. Give me a chance to make it up to you.’
Sinead was silent. She didn’t know for certain why he hadn’t flown out for the funeral. Something about a staffing crisis with his boat-building business was the excuse he’d given. That may or may not have been true, but she also knew her parents had barely spoken in the past ten years, and John had never been keen on revisiting his first marriage. He’d always said he’d emigrated to get a fresh start in life. Maybe he just couldn’t face coming home. He was staring down the lens at her, waiting for a response; the silence was awkward even with eleven thousand miles between them.
Sinead said, ‘It’s a long way to come. You were busy. Don’t worry about it.’
‘You know it’s hard for me as well, this long-distance thing. I wanted to bring you out here when you were a kid, but your mum had custody and…’ He trailed off and then said, ‘It’s not easy having these conversations on computers.’
‘We can have a proper talk when I visit,’ she said.
John smiled. ‘I’d like that. Before you go, there’s something I’ve been meaning to say…’ He coughed. ‘Caitlin… she did the best she could; she loved you and looked after you. But you were looking after her, too – dealing with the drinking, the depression. That’s not the way it should be. Right?’
‘Okay.’ Sinead leaned in to the laptop. ‘What are you… why are you saying…?’
John lifted his hand in the air as though he was physically grasping for the right words. ‘When I see Freddy and Sam, running around with not a care in the world, it makes me realise how much easier they’ve got it. We were too young when we had you. I definitely was. What I’m trying to say is, there was nothing more you could have said or done. It’s like she was slowly self-destructing. I tried helping her, but God knows I wasn’t much use to anyone back then.’ He paused and leaned forward in his chair. ‘I know how hard you tried, but it wasn’t your fault. Remember that. You couldn’t save your mum from herself.’
A ball of repressed emotion moved in the pit of Sinead’s stomach. Her father was staring back. Tears began pooling in her eyes, but no way was she going to cry. She cleared her throat.
‘Okay, yeah. I have to go now.’
‘I thought you should know that. You mustn’t ever blame yourself.’
‘Okay.’ She had to look away from the screen.
‘Have a think about some dates and email me.’
‘I will. Bye, Dad.’
‘Bye Sinead.’
Sinead ended the call and the Skype program made its whoop sound. She closed the laptop and rubbed her eyes. God, where did that come from? She laughed. John had blindsided her; opening up like that was totally out of character. She wondered if Abby, his wife, had put him up to it. Abby was into a lot of New Age hippie stuff: crystals and chakras and all that. Sinead reclined on the mattress and lay there a while, twirling the pendant between her fingers and thinking about what her father had said. Why had it upset her? Probably because they had never had that conversation before – actually, they’d never had a proper heart-to-heart about anything. But there was more to it. He’d touched a nerve. She had never admitted it to herself before, but it was the truth. Ever since she was a little girl, she had tried to save her mum.
And she had failed.
29
Getting inside was an absolute impossibility. Of all the places that Joel could be staying, a student hall of residence had to be the most difficult to breach, other than a prison. Security passes, the night porter, the hundred other students in the building – all insurmountable obstacles. Miles could probably find out which room Joel’s shoe-shop-Cinderella lived in, but what good would it do him? He’d never gain entry to the building without a pass or being signed in at the front desk. And he couldn’t deal with Joel and the new girlfriend on his own. This was precisely the type of situation requiring an accomplice. Someone to pose as a student, distract the night porter, act as a lookout.
Miles glanced at his watch; it had just gone nine and the sky was now slate black. The Holloway Road was full of drunks and vagrants, and he was tired of ignoring or refusing the constant requests for spare change. Five of the fuckers had tried it on in the last ninety minutes and he was liable to disembowel the next one who approached him. He put his hands into his coat pockets. In the left was a small sheathed knife. In the right, a thick, knotted leather garrotte. He traced his fingers along the weapons, feeling the covered blade serrations with his left hand and the bumps of the garrotte with his right hand.
Too much time had been wasted on tracking Joel, following him from the shoe shop as he went to meet the girl in Chinatown; Miles had recognised her from his previous visit to the shop, the time he’d toyed with Joel while buying new trainers. He’d waited outside the restaurant for them to finish their meal and then fought to keep them in sight on a packed Piccadilly Line tube. Since seven thirty he’d been pacing outside the building, waiting to see if Joel would re-emerge. He was assuming that Joel would leave once he’d shot his load and go and spend the night somewhere else, somewhere less secure. But no, it looked like lover boy was staying put. Miles concluded he might have more luck first thing in the morning.
Walking back to the tube station, he nurtured a growing feeling of resentment towards Sinead. He simply couldn’t fathom why she had dropped Joel so suddenly. She had been completely infatuated with him. Then Miles had presented her with a golden opportunity to entice him over and her reaction had been one of complete revulsion. He was forced to admit that the contrarian workings of a woman’s mind were beyond his comprehension.
Miles entered the station ticket hall and went to the Oyster machine. He pressed his card on the yellow reader and the display showed there was only £1.60 on his Pay As You Go. Selecting the £20 top-up option, Miles took out his wallet. It was feeling a lot lighter. Just a few more twenties and a couple of tens.
Before he approached the barriers, his phone started to ring. He reached for the BlackBerry. The incoming number wasn’t one he recognised. The only people he had given his new number to were Sinead and the recruitment agency. Agencies didn’t normally ring outside business hours and Sinead’s number was logged in his contacts. Cautiously, he answered the call.
‘Yes?’
‘Hello – Elliot? It’s Gwen. Gwen Francombe. I’ve been meaning to call for a while…’
Miles froze. He held the BlackBerry away from his ear, as if it might infect him.
‘Elliot? Are you there?’
He lowered the BlackBerry and ended the call.
***
The metal shutter was descending on the shopfront as Miles approached, so he dashed ahead and knocked on the glass. The shutter halted halfway. Miles stooped down and saw Lucien Willoughby on the other side, in the corner near the door, holding a key into the shutter’s activation point. Miles gave a little wave and smiled sheepishly. ‘Am I too late?’