DEATHLOOP (42 page)

“I could have got Celebrations or Quality Street, but the man in the shop said Roses are the best because they’re everyone’s favourites, so I took his advice,” said Jason aware that Zack would leave soon, and trying to prevent it, “are you going in there now?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Shall I come in with you?”

“No, sorry, it’s not allowed.”

Zack left Jason standing there, looking through the small glass porthole, as he made his way along to the nurse’s station. As he arrived there, he glanced back, and saw him still peering in at him, his hood almost concealing his face.

Today Miriam seemed keen to speak with Zack, relating her conversation with the police. “There’s no way into your apartment block is there? I mean apart from being buzzed up.”

“No of course not, although… the boy that found her didn’t live there, and no one is quite sure how he got in.”

“Who is he, this boy?”

“Just some kid… he’s got fixated on me for some reason.”

“Why?” asked Miriam, as though the idea was completely beyond her comprehension.

“That’s what we’d all like to know.”

“So tell him to bugger off,” she said, demonstrating instantly the difference between the two sisters.

“Listen, he’s not involved in this, and if he hadn’t been there it could have been worse.”

“Tell me how!” said Miriam, on the verge of tears.

“I’m sorry, Miriam,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

Zack threw a clumsy arm round her, although physical contact felt strange to both of them. They had tolerated each other up to this point. Zack, convinced that Miriam had always talked him down to Veronica, Miriam, well aware that Zack knew she had always talked him down to Veronica and both unsure quite how that information left them.

Two hours later Zack told Miriam he needed some air. It was true to some extent, but he found being near her a strain. As he made his way to the lift he was aware vaguely of someone behind him.

“Boo!” said Jason, a rare smile beaming out from beneath his hood. Although irritated that he was still hanging around, Zack covered. They stepped into the lift, Jason hitting the buttons with a flourish.

“
Lift off
!” he yelled, then beating out some hip hop number with his hands on the lift doors. “How about lunch?” Jason demanded.

“Okay,” said Zack, decisively, as the lift expelled them on the ground floor, “good idea.”

Zack deliberately chose a dark corner in an anonymous restaurant, pushing the table towards Jason and trapping him up against the wall. The lunch menu was basic and brief, it didn’t take them long to order.

“Right,” said Zack, watching him down a pint of Coke in a matter of seconds, “I want the truth this time, I don’t want any stories, I want honest answers to all my questions.”

Jason was surprised by Zack’s tone of voice. What had brought all this on? He had helped the girlfriend, in fact he had probably saved her life, and he had bought her chocolates which cost nearly £5 and he had done the right thing for ages now, so why was Zack telling him off? He couldn’t understand it at all.

“How did you find out where I lived?”

Jason was about to lie, but couldn’t come up with anything half decent, so there was nothing for it. “I looked you up on the Internet.”

“You checked electoral roles, is that it? And how did you know how to do that?”

“A boy told me how to do it. I’ve done it before. I went out with someone called Kelly once and for a joke she wouldn’t tell me where she lived so I found out and knocked on her door,” said Jason tearing bread rolls apart with his dirty hands and starting to chomp on them.

“And do you still see her, this Kelly?”

“No, it wasn’t serious. She got tangled up in electric cables on a building site and that was it… she got fried. She was only 18.”

“Well I’m sorry to hear that,” said Zack.

“I couldn’t even go to her funeral either, I was on holiday at the time in Barbados.”

“So who told you about me?” said Zack.

“No one,” said Jason holding eye contact.

“Why track me down then, why ask me to represent you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, stumped.

“Someone must have told you, so who is this person? I don’t mind, I’d just like to know, that’s all.”

“A boy in a children’s home, he told me about you.”

“And how did he know me?”

“His dad was a gangster and you got him off.”

That could be true thought Zack, who had got a few gangsters off in his time, but it seemed unlikely.

“So years ago, someone mentioned me and you remembered the name is that it?”

“No one could forget it, could they, your name?” said Jason, (Zack privately acknowledging the truth in this), then as an afterthought, “we can be best mates, you and me.”

“No, we can’t.”

“Why not?” said Jason, looking anxious.

“It’s not appropriate,” said Zack, hoping he wouldn’t have to elaborate.

“That nurse thought you were a ponce first of all,” said Jason, with a smirk.

“Exactly, so there we are.”

“But you’re not.”

“Okay, look, it’s got to stop.”

“What has?”

“Following me… letting yourself into my apartment block… why not do something constructive with your time?”

“Like what?”

“Well, there’s lots of things to do in London, there’s museums and parks and basketball courts, all buzzing with people your own age.”

“I don’t like people my own age.”

“That’s ridiculous…”

“They want to stab me,” said Jason, “they all want to stab me.”

“How about I make an appointment for you to see someone,” said Zack, gently.

“A shrink you mean?”

“Maybe I could find someone who knows the kind of things you’re going through.”

“You wouldn’t have to look very far then, would you?” said Jason, staring straight at him.

Just then the waiter came up and put plates in front of them. Jason started gulping down his food as Zack watched him, now even more wary of this kid than ever before. In his distracted state Zack started to question if Jason was actually real, or if he had conjured him up like the dead people. He knew this was absurd, but reality and fantasy had become so compromised recently, Zack was actually starting to give the theory credence.

“Don’t you want that?” asked Jason minutes later after demolishing his own plate of food and taking hold of Zack’s.

“Please, it’s all yours,” said Zack, then with a noticeable change of gear, “okay, right listen to me Jason, this is where it stops.”

“Where what stops?” said Jason, glancing up at Zack as though he had just said something of passing interest.

“I’d prefer it if you left me alone.”

“But I saved your girlfriend’s life, not very
grateful
, are you?”

“I am grateful, but nothing can come of you hounding me like this.”

“Don’t tell me what to do because I won’t do it,” said Jason, pleasantly, and extremely lucid for once.

“Right, that’s it, I have asked you politely to leave me alone, if you refuse, it means we get the police involved, is that what you want?”

What Jason actually wanted right at that moment was to tip the table over, in fact, he was seconds away from tipping the table over, but he didn’t think that would help him somehow. So he forced himself to sit back, chewing on a piece of steak and watching Zack trying to attract the waiter’s attention to get the bill.

Outside in the street Jason fell into step beside him. “Jason weren’t you listening?” said Zack, stopping suddenly, and turning to confront him, “please go back to Holloway and leave me in peace.”

Zack continued at a cracking pace but he knew Jason was still tagging along in his wake and it angered him so much that he was very close to grabbing the boy and flinging him into the traffic.

When he got to the hospital he had a word with the security guy who was happy to assist, barring Jason’s way. Zack heard him coming up with a story about his grandmother being near to death and having to see her, but as Zack put distance between them, he could tell that with this particular security guard, Jason had met his match. Once in the lift, Zack let out a huge sigh of relief, and distracted by everything, found himself up on the top floor outside the maternity ward of all places. On his way downstairs, his phone jumped into life.

“Tracy, what’s up?”

“What have you said to Jason?”

“I told him to leave me alone, that’s all.”

“He’s threatening suicide,” she said simply.

“For God’s sake Tracy, don’t you think I’ve bloody got enough to deal with?”

Zack cut her off in a rage, flying down the stairs three at a time, and wanting to rip all the jolly watercolours off the walls and chuck them out of the window to the gardens below for good measure. He shouldn’t have yelled at Tracy or hung up on her, but he could not bear the sanctimonious note of accusation in her voice. She had been the one to say he should dump Jason, now the kid was her client all she could do was lay into him for taking her advice.

Zack was in no mood for Miriam either, so when she sidled up to him as soon as he arrived in Critical Care he decided not to take any more of her nonsense, and so intent was he on sticking up for himself, he failed to notice one thing, Miriam was smiling.

Clarissa and Zack were in the kitchen at Baker Street, Clarissa determined to see Zack eat a decent meal. “How much weight have you lost?” she demanded.

“I don’t know, but all my clothes are starting to look pretty ridiculous now, flailing around behind me, like sheets in the wind.”

“It’s going to be all right,” said Clarissa, “it’s been one kind of hell after another, but it’s going to be fine, I just know it.”

Zack wondered where he had heard that before. He had no confidence that everything would be fine at all, but for the moment another crisis had been held in check.

Veronica had woken up and was making sense, and it seemed her nervous system had survived the fall. She had suffered concussion, was bruised and battered, with a broken collar bone, a broken wrist, a broken ankle and three broken ribs, one of which had barely missed a lung, but she would live to fight another day, although who she fought with on the day in question still remained a mystery. She could remember nothing yet, although the doctors seemed to think she might remember more in due course.

“We need to get out of this town I think,” said Zack, “when Veronica is on the mend I’ll suggest it.”

“What about the gallery?”

“Miriam can look after it and make herself useful for once, that was the original idea apparently, but it hasn’t turned out that way.”

“Sam was asking after you.”

“And did you tell him my services were required in yet another hospital on the other side of town?”

“I didn’t tell him about Veronica, no, I thought I’d let you do that.”

“So he thinks I’ve abandoned him, does he?”

Clarissa shrugged, confirming it. “I told him you had stuff to take care of… he got the picture.”

“Can I stay over, Clarissa?” asked Zack.

There was a miniscule hesitation before Clarissa replied, but in that split second they both knew what she was thinking. “Sure, of course you can.”

“I don’t want to go back to Claremont for the time being.”

“Then stay here, best all round.”

Zack fell into bed in the spare room and slept very well. Clarissa found sleep difficult, getting up at 3 am and composing a text to send to Sam. It said ‘Zack is staying over, needs company!’ then she deleted it, then she wrote it again, then she looked at it but didn’t send it. Finally she decided not to send him a message at all, and selecting some awful Hollywood blockbuster from Sam’s eclectic collection of old video tapes, she fell asleep half way through it to be woken by Zack’s phone at 8 am. She took the phone into Zack, already sitting up in bed and looking alarmed. He snatched it from her and accepted the call as Clarissa left him to it.

“God, Veronica, are you okay?”

“Who is this Susan, Zack?”

“
What?
”

“
Susan
,” she said, starting to cry.

“I’ve told you, an ex, that’s all…”

“You told me nothing of the sort. Did you rape her?
Did you
?”

“I’m coming over.”

Zack leapt out of bed and threw his clothes on, struggling with his shoes as he hopped along the hall to find Clarissa.

“What’s up?” she said, immediately.

“She knows about Susan, who’s told her?”

“Well don’t look at me…”

“My God Clarissa…” said Zack, as though a thought had suddenly struck him.

“What?”

“Jesus…”

“Zack, what?” A couple of moments later she got it. “
Susan?
God no, Zack it can’t be…”

At the hospital Zack knocked softly on Veronica’s door and crept inside her room. “How are you?” he said, perching next to her on the bed, picking up her hand and kissing it.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Okay, now listen, Susan made an allegation but it wasn’t true, the police have dropped the charge because they found out she’d done exactly the same thing before to some other poor sod, two of them in fact.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I didn’t want to lose you.”

“You wouldn’t have
then
.”

“Who told you about Susan?”

“Someone…”

“Yes, but who?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it Susan who pushed you down the stairs?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Look, Veronica…”

“What else? What else has been going on?” she said, almost panicked.

“You know the rest.”

“You didn’t tell me about Russell until you had to.”

“For the same reason…”

“You don’t trust me, so now I don’t trust you.”

“Okay, I keep things close to my chest, I put my hands up to that.”

“Don’t you see what this means? It means you think I’m so shallow, so
stupid
actually, that I can’t work things out for myself. Is that what you think of me?”

“No, of course I don’t.”

“It’s just so patronizing.”

“I’m sorry.”