Last Line (26 page)

From here he could see the farmhouse, stripped down now almost to its foundations. That had been Mike’s one concession over the last fortnight, while they closed up their places in London and sorted out their affairs—to have a professional building team come in and take down those parts of the house not already blown apart. The structural damage had been too great. His city flat was on the market to pay for the third-time-lucky creation of the farm. All John had been able to contribute to the project was the sale of his Jag, which he’d part-exchanged against a massive Toyota 4x4, better suited to lugging masonry back and forth and dealing with the potholed Somerset lanes. He’d done it without consulting Mike, who’d been duly horrified, but John hadn’t minded. There’d been a moment two weeks before, tearing down the Hampshire roads, convinced that the objects of his pursuit were already lost to him, when the car had turned into a toy around him, its charm evaporating like a dream. They’d driven the truck down to Glastonbury early that morning. The caravan Mike had ordered had been delivered, a place to live while they worked on the build.

They would be in close quarters, their accommodations far from luxurious. Which was fine with John, who had discovered that he could after all survive without a power shower, but in many ways he still felt as unsure of himself as he had during that first weekend.

Especially after today. John got up restlessly and began to gather stones together for a fire. He wondered if there was any way he could have kept his mouth shut. He’d tried, as an experiment, working shoulder to shoulder with Mike all that morning. Their first task had been to sort through the demolished masonry, looking for pieces still good enough to use again. There had been plenty, despite the blasts, as if you could rip the old house apart to her bones yet never quite kill her. They had got as far as the remains of the kitchen area, and Mike had stopped work suddenly, staring at the place where Anzhel had fallen.

“
I wish they’d let us know about the inquest. I’d feel like this was really over then
.”

“
Mike, there isn’t going to be one. Anzhel’s body wasn’t found here. And Oriel’s never turned up in that church in Hounslow
.”

John had had to tell him, he supposed. He packed his hearthstones into a neat ring and added a handful of the kindling he’d gathered on the way up. There his Boy Scout skills failed him, and he fell back on matches, swearing softly as one after the other sparked and burned without catching. They’d gone to see Webb as soon as they had got back to London. He’d greeted them with gruff pleasure and every ounce of the feigned innocence Nick Skelton had predicted. Shaw and Skelton had gone rogue, he’d declared, or perhaps had been working the other side all along. A terrible betrayal and beyond reparation now, since neither Nick nor Diane had been seen since and couldn’t be found. Webb would be willing to compensate the damage to Agent South’s property. The old sod had got as far as taking out his payment book and a pen.

He’d heard their resignations with an outraged dismay John could almost—almost—believe to have been genuine. Mike, nerves still raw, emotions near the surface, had slammed out of the office straight away afterward. And John had moved to follow, but Webb had called him back. The theatrics had vanished. He had looked like himself again—a tired old wolf watching the antics of the forest life around him with weary contempt. “
If you’re going to cast off the support of this agency, Griffin, you should know we have no proof that Mattvei and Oriel are dead
.”

Mike had taken the news calmly. They had discovered the old kitchen table somehow intact in the ruins, and John had helped him dust it off and carry it out to the barn. Then Mike had leaned both hands on its silky, time-scarred surface and said that he needed to go out for a while. Errands he was better off doing on his own, if John didn’t mind carrying on here. He’d stop off and get groceries. He wouldn’t be long.

That had been eight hours ago. John checked his mobile, but the signal was coming and going with the breeze or the ley lines or whatever other weird forces swirled around this place. John didn’t want to phone him and intrude on his solitude. For the past two weeks they had been gentle and chaste with one another, respectful, both treading softly on uncertain ground. On the other hand, night was falling. John would give him half an hour more, and then he would grab his gun and the 4x4 and tear off after him into the lanes.

His phone beeped, as if somewhere the thought had been received and understood.
Sorry I’m late
, the text said.
On my way home.

John’s stomach unclenched. It looked as if Mike wouldn’t be far behind on his promise. Familiar headlights appeared briefly on the rise of land a couple of miles away. Now he could enjoy the night, and his own attempts to get a fire going, which, even if he was ridiculously bad at it, was still a satisfying activity. The twigs spat and crackled as if they were damp, although he’d been careful to pick up only the driest forage on the track through the woods. Still, it seemed to be taking. He settled down beside it cautiously. He wouldn’t permit himself to watch for Mike’s approach. Nor would he allow the paranoid fantasy to surface that it wasn’t Mike at all but whichever unkillable ghost from his past who had murdered him and stolen his car. If he jumped at every shadow, he would never know a minute’s peace again. He had lit a beacon on the hill. He would let the night unfold.

A car engine whispered in the valley. A door closed softly, and then after a time John couldn’t measure, a long stride began to stir the grass. A rhythmic crunch on the small stones of the track, and then only a sense of oncoming presence, silent on the rich turf.

“Griff.”

He let himself at last look up. Michael in the dusk was a sight worth waiting for. He was still in his work clothes and his jeans and T-shirt contoured him lovingly. Was his hair quite black? John had thought so, but in certain lights—this mixture of sunset and flame—there was a sable brown to it, almost a bronze. John wanted to devote a long while to the study. All the attention he had once directed at the mirror seemed to have turned outward and fastened on his partner. John could barely look away. “Hiya,” he said, flatly in proportion to the leap at his heart. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Sorry I ran out on you.” Michael crossed the last few yards of ground between them and crouched by the fire. He had a leather satchel slung over one shoulder and a big carrier bag in his hand. “Could you manage some dinner?”

The enticing scents drifting John’s way were more than wood smoke. Incongruously in the rural English night, he could smell Oriental food. “That’s never a takeaway.”

“Believe it or not. Some enterprising kid’s opened a Szechuan in Teal village, close enough to get it home hot.”

“I love Szechuan.”

“I know. They must’ve known you were moving in.”

John kept his eyes down and concentrated on helping Mike untangle from the satchel strap and start to unpack the fragrant cardboard boxes from the bag. Somehow, despite all their preparations—clearing John’s flat, putting his things into storage—neither of them had gone so far as to put this great change into words. Yet Mike said it easily now, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Something blossomed in John’s chest—pleasure of a kind he’d never felt before. Not his usual reflexive enjoyment of a moment but enduring, golden, real. “Very nice.” He sat up and made an expansive townie’s gesture at the rolling countryside around them. “Shouldn’t we be living off the land or something, though? Catching rabbits and cooking them?”

“What, on this poor little fire? Be lucky to warm up their fleas.”

Mike leaned forward and gave the fire an encouraging poke. John couldn’t see that he’d done anything all that special, but the struggling flames leaped high, became a blaze to ward off wolves. They sat and watched in silence. Then Mike said, helplessly, as if the words were being shaken out of him, “I like fire. I think I like it a bit too much.”

“Just as well I like water,” John responded absently. He wasn’t sure what he meant, except that the coolness of the river below them had suddenly suggested itself to him. The river and dewfall and the cure for Mike’s fevers. At this moment, he felt as if he could stretch out his hands and make it rain.

“We should destroy one another, technically.”

“Or generate a hell of a lot of steam.”

Mike snorted. John hadn’t meant to make it sound suggestive. But he had, absurdly so, and Mike was laughing, blushing like a kid, eyes brilliant. “At least let’s have dinner first,” he said, reaching into the bag and ceremoniously handing John a plastic fork.

They ate peacefully. Mike asked if he’d heard from Quin, and that was no longer the appetite-killer it had been. John talked to him every day now. The daily calls had started as a safety measure, a twenty-four-hour check-in to ensure that whatever dangers the boy had encountered hadn’t followed him back to his school. But John had discovered that Quin unshielded and happy had plenty to say for himself—ordinary, diamond-sharp observations of the world around him, his days, and school routines. That he could pick up the phone and greet John with shy affection, bid him good-bye with a curiously adult injunction to take care. John had begun to look forward to the calls. “He’s fine,” he said, passing Mike the chicken and snagging a bit more of the delicious spiced veg for himself. “Perfectly happy to stick out a few more weeks of summer school, if he can have his August here when the place is a bit more habitable. I heard from the head of Glasto secondary while you were out. They’ll be happy to take him from the start of the September term.”

“Good. No problems with the next-of-kin paperwork?”

“Because his brother’s shacked up with his uncle Mike
in loco parentis
?” John asked happily. “No, I think they have to be open-minded these days.”

“And they’re not concerned that he’s a hopeless runaway?”

“Well, since he’s been trying to run home, and it’s day school, they’re not bothered. They reckon he’s our problem.” Their eyes met in rueful acceptance of the changes to an already transformed lifestyle Quin’s arrival would bring. “Mike. One last time. Are you sure about this?”

“Never more sure of anything. In fact”—Mike wiped his fingers and unbuckled the satchel—“that was one of the things I did this afternoon. Saw my lawyer in Glasto. He gave me some stuff to read if I was thinking about becoming Quin’s legal guardian.”

John almost swallowed a green bean whole. He gratefully took the bottle of Somerset ale Mike held out to him. “What? You mean
adopt
him?”

“I suppose so. Is that too much of a head-fuck?”

“No. I should think he’d die of joy. But, you’re already doing everything a parent would. You don’t have to set it in stone.”

“No, I know. It’ll just make it easier if… Well, that was another thing. Something I should’ve done ages ago, and I don’t know why I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

He stretched out an arm. John couldn’t read the anxiety in his face, then understood with a shiver that he wasn’t sure his gesture would work. They’d barely touched lately, old fears and injuries stiffening. Unhesitatingly John set aside the carton and went to him, closing his eyes in pleasure and relief as Mike’s embrace tightened, putting an arm round his waist in return. “Sorry, mate. I don’t think they’re gonna let you adopt me too.”

“Highly improper in the circumstances. No, I mean about the house. I’ve got the papers here. I had them drawn up a couple of years ago, and then I got…scared, I suppose, that you’d think it was weird or something, so I never asked you to sign.”

“In a minute I’ll work out what you’re on about, won’t I?”

“The house and the land. I want to put it in joint names. Then if anything happens to me, it’ll be simpler. No homophobic panic while they try to find my nonexistent missus.”

John stared at the sheaf of documents Mike had pulled out of the satchel. Between the firelight and the embers of the day, there was just enough light to read the top sheet. It was straightforward, and—yes—dated back in 2009. He and Mike had barely known one another then, he’d thought. He’d been down to the farmhouse for a visit or two. John remembered—oh, he’d never forget, would he—the half delicious, half dreadful sense of beginning to fall in love, chastising himself all the while because this new partner, hospitable and kind as he was, could surely never return the feeling. “No,” he whispered, unable to trust his voice. “If I lose you, I don’t want your house or your bloody land. Anyway, whatever happens to you…” He pulled Mike closer until he felt ribs crackle under his arm. “It’s going to happen to me too. Isn’t it?”

“All the more reason we should sort this out now. So it can all go straight to Quin, in trust until he’s eighteen. That’s this sheet here. I’ve got a pen.”

So John sat up and signed where Mike showed him. Questions died on his lips about why it had to be now, why Mike had brought these papers up a hill to be signed by firelight instead of waiting for morning, a flat surface, the caravan’s little fold-down table. He already knew. “I’m sorry,” he said, folding up the document carefully and handing it back to Mike. “I tried to think of every possible way I could get round telling you.”

Mike nodded. For a moment he looked as stern and distant as he had that morning when John had broken the news; then the mask dissolved, leaving only a worried man behind. “Can’t have been easy for you. But I put a bullet into Anzhel Mattvei from close range. If he got up and walked away, I need to know.”

“Mike, come on. If someone took his body—if Webb’s playing that deep a game or somebody else is screwing with us—that’s bad enough. But I felt him die. If there’s anybody creeping around in the shadows out there, it’s not him.” John was close enough to feel Mike’s shiver as if it had been his own, and he shifted to kneel behind him, caressing his arms. Shielding his back from the night and whatever monsters it contained. “It’s someone as human and killable as we are. And we can deal with that.”

“Well, that’s another point.” Mike’s hand closed warmly round John’s wrist. He glanced up at him sidelong, his expression odd. “I went to see a couple of other people this afternoon. That’s why I was so late. The first was the builder, to pick up some papers he’d rescued from the house while they were working. He gave me a whole load of stuff, some photographs that… Oh God, no. It’s too crazy. I might try that one on you after another couple of beers. Anyway, I got those, and then I decided—I don’t know why—to go and look up the police inspector who dealt with my mother’s death. I remembered something, Griff. Breaking the programming must have shaken it loose.”