And Jamie was appalled that Hank thought he could win somebody like Angie with money and status.
Some people don’t have a price tag and Angie was one of them. Which was what attracted Joe Folly to her.
Theirs was a fire that Paul thought he’d never get to feel in his lifetime. It was like an inferno of pure respect and trust, and all the goddamn things Paul had sold off years ago.
He could taste it but never attain it.
For Jamie there was no going back. There was no choosing between his sister and his bosses. Since then he’d become insufferable. Noble suddenly. The seller of dreams. The purveyor of honour.
He heard a noise on the other side of the door and looked up briefly before stuffing the rest of his things into his bags. They were leaving to go to the huge pile in the country, to lie low and recover from the shock. Paul was resigned to the fact that he might never make it out again. But it wasn’t as bad as what had happened to Jamie. He at least hoped that if he succumbed to the toxic side effects of Neurohydroxy-14, then he’d slip away in a drug-induced coma. It must be better than slamming into a hard floor at breakneck speed. He’d never forget the sound of Jamie’s bones breaking and the colour of his blood seeping out of his body as he lay broken and destroyed.
The poor bastard.
He didn’t know how Angie had died and he didn’t want to. But he knew they were framing him for it, why else would his boots disappear and end up at a crime scene? Unless…
Paul stopped packing for a minute and thought about his best friend. They’d shared everything. Except shoes, he thought affectionately. He still hadn’t found the damn CAT boots.
Starting out in London, with nothing but an idea to make the health industry more about proper fitness, they’d shared a flat in Shoreditch. Then they rented an office and took turns onthe one computer they owned. Their phone line was manned in shifts. Their stationery was thieved from the library. They shopped in food banks supposed to be for those struggling to make ends meet. But they were both consummate storytellers and so the women on the door let them in. They went dressed in jeans and baggy jumpers, telling anyone who’d listen how they were brothers whose parents had died, and they’d been made redundant and were both struggling to find work. Hustlers even then.
It got to the point where they used to go just to tell new stories. Their audience was a captive one and they took more and more food each time. They studied the women who volunteered in the tiny shed in Queensbridge Road, and practised their fiction on them.
They eventually shared some of them in bed too.
It was a thesis in mind control. A psy-ops campaign in social engineering.
They moved on when they got bored. London was never short of charities and do-gooders desperate to make connection. That was where they learnt how to sell. And how to profit from others. But when somebody wins, somebody always loses.
This time it had been Jamie.
There was a light tapping on the door and Paul froze.
Then he heard it again.
He went to it and peered through the spyhole and saw that it was Tilda.
He opened it and let her in and she strode into the centre of the room.
‘Ready?’ she asked him.
He nodded. ‘Nearly.’
‘Get a move on, Christ we’ve been here long enough.’
She stared at him, and he got the impression that she wasn’t here to jump into bed with him. She had her game face on.He finished packing and looked around the room, noticing his charger was still plugged into the wall.
‘Did the police search your room?’ she asked.
‘No, why? Should they have done? I thought you said they had no right to enter anyone’s room,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘You can stop panicking. I never had you down as somebody who lost his nerve.’
‘I’m distracted, that’s all. I don’t know what the future looks like without him,’ he said.
‘Don’t concern yourself with things like that,’ she said, softer now. Her voice made him wary. Tilda spread her affections thinly and this level of attention made him cautious.
Paul eyed her suspiciously. She thought she was in control of them both the whole time, over everything. Like a master puppeteer. But she wasn’t.
She grew serious again and looked cross. ‘Was it really necessary to tell the police that I’m shagging you?’
