‘You should have had some texts.’
I get my phone out and open the messages, theTime is running shortand theI know who you really are, all that menacing crap. ‘This was you? Jesus, you nearly gave me an aneurysm.’ He shrugs. ‘Why?’
‘I hired an investigator to track you down. He got both your phone numbers, but couldn’t trace you. He even set up a honey trap of a job with your firm, although you didn’t go for it.’
Bloody hell. Jasmine wasn’t trying to set me up, she was actually passing on a message. I owe her an apology once this is over. And Fred still hasn’t answered my question.
‘But why track me in the first place? If your life was so much better without me in it?’
He looks around, not meeting my eye. ‘Curiosity, I guess. When I saw you at the door, I thought you’d worked it out and you were coming back to …’ He tails off, and shrugs. After a silence, he checks his phone. ‘Four minutes.’
I waste another two minutes sitting in silence, thinking about Dad, and wondering what Mum is doing right now. Eventually I remember I’ve got quite a lot else on.
‘Fred. People are trying to kill me. And a lot of other people want me arrested for something I didn’t do. I’m asking you one more time to just … help.’
‘Absolutely not. But if you like, I’ll give you a snack for wherever you’re going. You look done in. I don’t think that counts as aiding and abetting.’
‘What have you got?’
‘Should have a Kit Kat somewhere.’ I laugh, then realise he’s serious. He goes to the kitchen, opens a tin, and hands one over as he returns. Orange flavour. I pocket it.
I get up and move to the door. ‘I’m really sorry, Fred. But I didn’t do it. Not this particular thing, I mean. I know I screwed the rest up.’ He shrugs, and I don’t blame him. He leans past me and holds the door open. I stand in the corridor, looking back, trying to work out what to say to him for the last time. At that moment, his phone alarm sounds. He props the door open with his foot, takes a business card from his wallet, enters a number, and dials. With the phone to his ear, he says, ‘See you.’
‘See you, Fred. Oh, one more thing. Almost forgot.’ I dig in a pocket and hand over his passport. ‘I could have used this to flee the country, just so you know.’
At the other end of the line, someone has clearly just answered, because he’s caught for a moment between staring at me and listening to his phone. Then he says, ‘Hello?’ and looks to the side, and I turn and head down to the dark street.
43
The next coach back to town isn’t until tomorrow, so short of breaking into someone’s car, I’m down here for the night.
I know where to go. At least there’s no CCTV to follow me through the streets.
The beach is dark, and bloody cold. April’s still rough on the coast. The walk down is steep, too, and before risking my neck I pause at the top of the cliff path. There’s a lonely tanker on the horizon, and a few tiny fishing boats bobbing off to the left, near the old harbour. The air is clean, and empty, and there are more stars above than I’ve seen for months.
Down at beach level, I turn right, past the little tin café, and count. One … two … three … here we go. Fourth hut along. Round the back, dodging the little creek, across thecracked slabs, kick the nettles away from the back wall … There’s the lock box. Code: 1994. Back round the front, I unlock the door, fetch a torch from the kitchen cupboard, use it to find the little Calor heater, and set up a folding chair.
It’s pretty in here. Little framed drawings on the wall, all of seasidey things – gulls, the huts themselves, striped towels on a washing line. There are threaded shells, bunting on the benches, cushions shaped like biscuits. It’s chintzy, and fun, and just the sort of place I’d usually sneer at without good reason. It’s just … nice.
This is the first place I ever interloped.
What am I doing here?
At that moment, it’s like all the lies I’ve ever told team up into one enormous lie and stand before the beach hut, blocking my exit.
Fred didn’t use my name tonight. My real one, I mean. Not the one I’ve given you, or Em and the others, or my firm. If he had done, I’m not sure I’d have recognised it.
Right now, it occurs to me that I really am the person I seem to be, for the first time in years. I’m a vagrant, a youngish man whose only skill is breaking and entering, a parasite who’s about to be collared for something he didn’t do, but who absolutely deserves to be caught for all the things he did.
All this sounds a bit mawkish, doesn’t it? And I’m not too manly to admit it: I indulge in a bit of a cry. If I could think of one person who might help me, I’d call them. But there’s nobody left. It’s been a long day, a long eight years. And then,with the little stove warming my feet and lower ankles and nothing else, I fall asleep.
I wake to find a tall, hairless figure stooping over me, its arm reaching out.
‘Christ!’ I kick out, which knocks the stove over, and between us the figure and I spend a scrambled thirty seconds stamping to ensure it doesn’t set the hut alight. The figure says ‘sorry’ throughout, which reassures me I’m not about to be murdered. Eventually the stove is upright, and although I’ve burned my thumb, I’m otherwise intact.
He’s about twenty, I’d say – a weathered twenty. I thought he was bald at first, but he’s actually more in the first-fluff stage of someone who shaved their head a few weeks ago. He’s in a tracksuit, and his shoes are open-toed sandals with socks beneath them. ‘Sorry, mate. I was just passing and saw the light. Just snooping really.’
‘That’s all right. I shouldn’t be here either. Help yourself to a chair. Warm yourself up a fraction.’ He nods, grateful, and quickly opens up a chair beside mine, as if I’m about to change my mind. He pulls off his sandals and socks, and exposes his bare soles to the tiny warmth of the stove. His feet look like they’ve seen far more of the outside world than any feet should.
