Chapter Seventeen
“ANSWER THEphone,” Cal muttered as the Bluetooth rang dutifully in his ear. He clenched his jaw as though frustration could reach down the line and complete the connection on its own. It couldn’t, and Joe’s voicemail cut in for the sixth time.
“What the hell are you doing, Joe?” Cal asked, his voice pitched to carry over the sound of traffic and the hiss of the wind.“If you get hurt, I’m going to kick your ass. Answer the fucking phone.”
He ended the call and revved the bike. It growled between his legs and the vibration of it caught in his hipbones as he wove haphazardly between the fast-moving traffic. This time of day, everyone had gotten to work, no one had left work yet, and the only people on the road where stay-at-home parents and airport cabs. Itmade for a straight shot down, but worry gnawed at the nape of Cal’s neck that he wouldn’t be fast enough.
It was a good thing Joe had texted him the address in Reading before he left the hotel or Cal would really have panicked.
As opposed to this—he thought wryly as he passed a fat, bubble-shaped people carrier on the inside, close enough that their wing mirror caught on his sleeve—completelyreasonable reaction.
He left the people carrier and the pissed-off driver behind as he gunned the bike and peeled onto the turnoff to Reading. It took him twenty minutes and one foul-mouthed rant at his bike’s satnav to find the street that Joe claimed was important.
The heavy rumble of the bike as he rolled down the street twitched curtains in every few houses. A few cars flashed their lightsas someone behind a door decided to check if they’d remembered to lock them last night.
Cal snorted to himself. Nobody who could afford his bike would go out of their way to drive out there and trade it for a hard-driven Nissan Leaf. The resale value was shit on the legit market.
The rust-pocked 45 screwed into the brickwork on one house finally caught his eye and Cal pulled up to the curb.It didn’t look like the sort of place that had a dark secret behind the dusty lace curtains. It looked like a normal house, the sort of place Cal would have bought as his starter home if he hadn’t blown all his money on whiskey, motorbikes, and bail.
He kicked the stand down with the heel of his boot and left the bike to cool down as he walked up to the front door. Instead of the doorbell orthe slot of the letterbox, Cal rapped his knuckles against the door. No answer. He tried again and shifted his weight impatiently on the worn bald doormat—the Welcome blurred where years of feet had scraped over it—as he waited for someone to come down the stairs or yell from the downstairs loo for him to wait.
When neither happened he pushed the letterbox open with a finger and leaned down topeer inside. Some people might have mistaken the stain on the carpet for something else—tomato juice, mud, anything that excused them from having to acknowledge the ugliness—but Cal had cleaned bloodstains out of the carpet of his grandad’s Rolls to earn his pocket money. He knew what it looked like.
“Joe,” he yelled. “Joe, are you there?”
No answer. Fuck it. He stepped back and kicked the door.It was heavy PVC and the impact of his boot rattled it in the frame but didn’t pop it open. He kicked it again and one of the panels popped at the side.
A window cracked in the house next door, and an old man poked his head out. “If you’re after Daisy’s gentleman friend, you’ve just missed him,” he snapped. His lips folded in over his worn yellow teeth as he took a drag on a crooked cigar. “Idon’t know what this place is coming to. First that woman down the road gets that boy of hers a scooter—up and down the street like a demented bee at all hours—and now some fella around, yelling the odds at—”
“Where’d they go?” Cal asked.
The old man squinted at him from under the glasses he’d shoved up onto his high, bare forehead. “Don’t see what right you have to know.”
Cal put his handon the fence between the gardens and braced his weight on it. “I can come and kickyourdoor in instead, old man.”
The old man pulled back into the house like a turtle into a shell and pulled the window in with him. “No one tells me where they’re going,” he spat out. “All I know is the car left from out back, him still giving her the worst word in his mouth. Nice friends you have, young man.”
“When?” Cal asked.
“Few minutes ago.” The words squeezed out through the gap in the window as the old guy latched it. “You can catch them if you run.”
“Fuck off,” Cal said.
He didn’t bother to ask what sort of car that Daisy/Rosie drove. It was a Volvo, the same one he’d seen at the graveyard and in his rearview mirror. His bike coughed in protest at being gunned back up so soon, but the enginesmoothed out as he pulled into the street. Where was he going? Where wouldshego?
Bleak panic swelled in Cal’s chest. It was already there, ready to go, because he’d expected this all along. Even if he had been quick enough it would still have ended like this. Cal wasn’t someone who people stayed for. He was someone they left.
He stopped the bike outside a corner shop and felt the black, stupidcompulsion to smash the narrow, fly-spotted windows. It wouldn’t help, but that had never stopped him before. There was a certain sick satisfaction in a failure that was so defiantly on your own terms.
Except this time it wasn’t the exams he knew he was going to fail at school or the faith that El put in him and Cal figured he might as well disappoint sooner than later. It wasn’t Cal this time—itwas Joe.
Cal braced his foot on the curb, the weight of the bike against his thigh, tugged his helmet off, and reached into his jacket for his phone. Part of him wished this was something he could blackmail or bribe Van into sorting out for him.
Not that it made any sense to expect his mum to come through for him, but he called her anyhow, five times in a row, until she finally answered withthe clipped, irritated “yes” that people gave cold callers.
“What happened the night Edward fucked up Grandad’s Bentley?” he asked.
It was a longshot, but how else would a mediocre London copper end up as the lifetime employee of an American millionaire and surrogate dad to the millionaire’s kid? The timing fit too. That didn’t mean it would help, but it was the only idea Cal had.
