East of the City (48 page)

Tubs looked over the canal again.

‘And Dad’s bag,’ I said, ‘and his ledger. You had them for months. Are you telling me you never looked in his ledger? You looked in it, all right. And Dad dropping that stuff on you to give to me. Then him dying. Knowing what you knew about Sebastian punting Dad into the ground. Don’t tell me you didn’t guess it might be suicide.’

Again no answer.

‘When you gave me Dad’s ledger, when I figured out that last bet meant he’d taken out the house insurance with Sebastian — that wasn’t news to you, was it? Tubs?’

‘Best leave it, Ian.’

‘You led me by the friggin’ nose.’

‘You dunno what you’re getting into.'

‘But I think I do, Tubs. I think I do.’

‘Then leave it alone,’ he said.

Why not? Why not do just that? I wasn’t under suspicion any more, Fielding thought he’d found Sebastian’s murderer. Eddie Pike did it. Nigel Chambers said so. And Eddie Pike, in an attempt to burn the last of the evidence against him, had died in a fire of his own making at the Stow. Everything neat and tidy.

But I couldn’t leave it. None of that was true.

I said, ‘When Mum and Dad died, and you got on my back about making a claim, you said you thought Dad had taken out a policy with Sebastian.’ I looked at him. ‘You knew he had, didn’t you. From that last entry in Dad’s ledger.'

Tubs stayed silent.

I reached out and touched his shoulder. ‘This is just you and me, Tubs. This isn’t going anywhere else.’

‘Okay,’ he said quietly. ‘So I knew.’

‘And when I went and asked Sebastian, and he told me I was mistaken. There was no way Dad gave him a premium—’

‘And you believed the guy,’ Tubs said, accusing me suddenly. ‘And when I said I thought he was lying, you told me to piss off.’

I lifted my head in surprise.

‘That’s what you said.’ Tubs waved a hand. ‘Piss off.’

I wanted to deny it, but thinking back, those weeks just after Mum and Dad died, I could have said anything. And Tubs, quite obviously, remembered. I bowed my head. I said, ‘Is that when you told Katy?’

‘It’s history.’ He was annoyed with me now ‘Forget it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked him. ‘Way back then, right at the start, you told Katy everything you knew. That’s why she kept on at me about Dad not letting us down. That’s why she risked her damn neck at the Stow fire, trying to get her hands on Sebastian’s blue book. You didn’t tell her just the other night. She knew all along about Dad’s ledger. Tubs, you told Katy. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

We looked at each other. He seemed to make a decision.

‘You wanna know why, Ian? Because I didn’t trust you.’

I swayed back on the bench like he’d smacked me in the mouth.

‘Don’t look so bloody surprised. You turned your back on your old man. You were best chums with Ward. Christ,’ he said, ‘look at this clown Mortlake you were working for. Now it turns out he’s had his fingers in the till for years. I mean, think about it, Ian. What kind of people you got yourself tied up with there. A different world, all right. A bunch of fucking crooks.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Ward was a wrong’n, I told you that. Jesus, your old man told you. Would you listen?’ Tubs spat over the side of the bench. ‘Would you fuck.’

‘I was doing a job.'

‘Yeah, well I hope it was worth it.’

I wanted to grab the fat bastard and shake him. I wanted him to understand how it was being big bold Bob Collier’s son. Not his penciller, or his friend, but his son. I didn’t turn my back on Dad. I didn’t turn my back on any of them. But Tubs had made up his mind. He thought just like Dad thought, there were two lots of people in the world, Us and Them. And Tubs believed that when I’d bust up with Dad, I’d crossed over.

‘You didn’t trust me,’ I said. ‘But you trusted Katy.’

'Yeah, I trusted her.’

I faced him directly now. ‘That was no reason to take her to Ward’s house that night, Tubs. No reason at all.’

He gave me a long, cool stare. Then he said, ‘This isn’t clever, Ian.’

And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe if Fielding hadn't tied things up so neatly with Eddie Pike, I would have let it be. But it had cost me plenty to get this far. I’d seen my world come apart, and no-one, not even Tubs, was going to slam the door in my face now.

‘When Pike got home to Sebastian's place that night, Tubs, he checked the security cameras. The ones in Ward’s bedroom, and all the private areas, were switched off. Pike told me that was the usual form when Ward had female company. Like Justine Mortlake. Or Angela.’ Resting an elbow on the back of the bench, I said, ‘And somehow, Tubs, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have gone to that kind of trouble on your account.’

‘What good’s this do anybody?’ Tubs opened his hands. ‘It’s finished, Ian. Drop it.’

Then from way up behind us, we heard someone whistle. We both turned to look up at the balcony of my flat. Katy stood there in her white bathrobe, a towel wrapped like a turban on her head. She held out a hand, fingers splayed, and called, ‘Five minutes!’ then she went back inside.

Facing Tubs again, I said, ‘I could ask her.’ He thought it over for a while, and then I said, ‘Tubs?’

‘You’re not gonna believe this, Ian.’

‘Try me.’

He swore, quietly. He knew I wouldn’t back down. ‘It wasn’t just the ledger. I seen Ward and your old man at the Gallon. I seen Bob give him the money and Ward write it down in that bloody blue book he had. And yeah, after the fire, after you told me to piss off, I let Katy know.’

I nodded. I said I believed it.

‘Not that,’ he said. He dragged a hand over his face. ‘Ian, I didn’t make Katy go to Ward’s house that night. Once she knew about the blue book, it got to be like a mission, how she’d get her hands on it, prove that Bob done the right thing like, and that Ward was bent. That afternoon, I got this call from her. Cancel everything. She’s got an invite to Ward’s house. Just the two of them.’

Tubs avoided my eyes. ‘Bloody women.' he said. ‘She made me go.’`

I asked him if Katy said why Ward had asked her over. He shook his head.

‘But what she was wearing when I took her round there. It wasn’t a business meeting, Ian, I tell ya.’

‘Did you go in?’

Again he shook his head. ‘I parked out in the street. I watched her go up through the gates, I was just meant to wait there.'

‘The plan being what? Katy sleeps with him? While he’s snoring his head off, she tip-toes down, steals the blue book and does a runner?’

‘It wasn’t my plan, Ian, okay? I was just there because she asked me.'

‘And then what?’

He avoided my eyes again. ‘Few hours later she comes out. She’s seen the blue book, she’s tricked Sebastian into getting it out for her.’ For the first time since we’d sat down, Tubs smiled. ‘Know what she done? She give him fifty quid. She told him she wanted to insure Jigsaw against injury. Can you believe the greedy bastard? He goes and gets the blue book out of his desk — she seen him. He signs a slip for her, locks the blue book back in the desk, then up and back into the champagne.'

Which explained why Tubs was so keen to help me find Pike. And the desk. He hadn’t been guessing, he knew for a fact that Sebastian’s blue book was there. And so had Katy.

I said, ‘She didn’t come back out of the house with the book.'

‘Couldn’t find the bloody key. Ward’s upstairs asleep, she’s going nuts trying to open his desk. She thought she heard him movin’ around.’

I looked at Tubs, waiting.

He shrugged. ‘She done a bunk, I took her home, end of story.‘

‘You were there a few hours.’

He nodded.

‘So when you took her home it was what, midnight? One?’

‘About,’ he said. ‘Look, what’s the big quiz?’ He glanced over his shoulder but there was no sign of Katy yet.

I said, ‘Eddie Pike got back to Ward’s place from the track at nine thirty or ten. And Ward was already dead. Tubs,’ I said, ‘don’t you think you’ve bullshitted me enough?'

We looked at each other. Me and Tub's, my family’s oldest friend, almost there at the end of the line. I’d closed the gap, but I hadn’t quite reached him. I saw that he wasn’t going to speak. He wasn’t going to, so if I was going to finish this, I had to.

‘Maybe I’ve changed, Tubs. Maybe you’re even right to blame me a bit for the bust-up with Dad, but really, I haven’t changed that much.’

Tubs’s face was like stone.

‘I’m not excusing myself. I wanted something different from Dad, that’s all. Mum knew that, she didn’t blame me. You want the truth, if Dad was alive now I’d make an effort with him too, but he isn’t, Tubs, neither of them are, and I can’t change that. You think I don’t lie awake some nights? You think it doesn’t hurt when I think about what Dad did, and maybe why he did it? Well, it does. It hurts like hell, because they were my family. It hurts because I stood there and watched the house burn down on top of them — don’t get up, Tubs, I’m not finished.'

He paused half-standing, then sat down again.

‘All that stuff, I can’t do one bloody thing about it now. I can’t even say sorry. They’re gone, Tubs. And you can put some of the blame on me for that if you want: I won’t argue. But I’m not going to roll over and die. Maybe the world might be better for it if I did, but I’m not going to.’ He looked out over the water; a gull cried. I’d reached the end. I said, ‘She’s my sister, Tubs. My sister.’

He didn’t say anything to that.

‘When she came back up to London after the funeral, Tubs, whose place did she come to? Yours or mine?’

I saw that one go into him. I’d reached him at last. When he faced me, I took the dark brown bottle out of my coat pocket, and placed it on the bench between us. We both looked at it. A brown bottle with nothing left in it but half a dozen strong-dose sleeping pills, Tripzatol. A brown bottle from Katy’s bathroom cabinet. Katy, the vegetarian, the homeopath’s dream customer, who for the past five years hadn’t been within shouting distance of even the lowest-dose aspirin. A brown bottle she hadn’t bothered to hide even after Fielding’s visits to our flat. The warning about cardiac side-effects was right there on the label.

I said, ‘She doesn’t know that she killed him, does she?’

Tubs stared at the bottle a long while. The only piece of evidence.

‘She spiked his drink, right?'

Tubs’s eyes were sadder than anything. ‘His fucking heart,’ he said. ‘How was she meant to know?’

Suddenly I felt very cold.

‘How?’ I said stupidly, as if that made any difference now.

Tubs looked like he still couldn’t believe how the whole business had panned out. He folded his arms. I guess he figured it was useless holding back now.

‘She came back to the car, I dunno, an hour later? It hasn’t gone like she planned. She’s slipped him the Mickey Finn, he hasn’t even made it up to the bedroom, he’s just flaked out on the bloody sofa. She tries the desk but it’s locked. She goes through his pockets, she can’t find the key, can she? She can’t find the bloody key. And all the time she’s worried the bastard’s gonna wake up and spring her.’ He looked at me. ‘Did I oughta be tellin’ you this?’

‘So she left?’

‘Not straight off. First she goes and pours the rest of the champagne down the sink, she brings the empty bottle back out and puts it on the floor next to Sebastian. Chucked a blanket over him too, she reckoned.’

An empty bottle and a blanket, just like Eddie Pike told me. But Tubs saw my puzzled look.

‘Katy wasn’t giving up,’ he said. ‘She thought if he woke up like that next mornin’ he might believe it happened like she was gonna tell him. You know, "You had too much to drink, you flaked out, so I covered you up and left." She thought maybe she could get another shot at that blue book another time.’

‘Didn’t she notice anything wrong with him?’

Turning away from me he said, ‘She reckoned he moaned a bit.’

Sebastian moaned a bit. Not, like Katy thought, in his sleep. He moaned because his dicky heart was packing it in. Because lying there, flaked out on the floor, Sebastian Ward was starting to die.

I took a moment with that. ‘So then she came out, and you both drove off.’

Tubs nodded. I faced him directly.

‘How long have you known the truth, Tubs?’

‘For sure?’ He opened a hand. ‘Only the other night. When you told me Pike’s story was the same as Chambers’ — they both said he was already dead — well, I thought, yeah, it had to be.’

‘And back when I told you about Sebastian’s bad heart? The K and R business, when I told you he was on medication?'

‘It started bells ringing,' Tubs conceded.

He knew what I was thinking: how could he not know? He’d spent days watching Fielding turn me inside-out; he’d listened to my desperate complaints against the bloody injustice of it all. Christ, he’d even helped me escape from the City airport security people and Mehmet — how could he not know what I was thinking now?

‘You didn’t say a word, Tubs. And if Fielding had got what he wanted, if he’d pinned Sebastian’s murder on me, you wouldn’t have said a word then either.’

It wasn’t a question and he didn’t treat it like one, he kept his gaze on me, steady. He really would have done it. If it had come to a choice, he would have looked on silently while I got sent down for a murder I didn’t commit. He would have done it so Katy could stay free. Anyone but Katy, and I would have taken his head off.

‘I’m not gonna apologize, Ian.’

I picked up the bottle. I turned it over in my hand a few times then I got up and walked over to the canal and unscrewed the cap. I jerked my hand, the last of the pills shot into the air, then rained down, peppering the surface of the water. I put the bottle in my left hand, took one step back and bowled the thing overarm into the middle of the canal. It splashed down and sunk like a rock. The ripples spread. That lone gull came swooping in, crying as it dipped near the water where the bottle had gone. Another pass, then the gull flew on. I dropped the bottle cap and scuffed it into the canal with the toe of my shoe. I put my hands in my coat pockets.

What, exactly, had I expected from Tubs? Loyalty? Friendship?

‘You don’t owe me an apology,’ I said, going back. ‘But Tubs—’ I stepped up close to the bench and leant over him - ‘just so there’s no disappointment here, don’t expect any bloody thanks.'