One Night (12 page)

Joel didn’t want to take the car, he wanted to just run up the drive, but Paterson stopped him.

“We’ll want it close by the house to get off quickly,” he said. “Plus, I think we should stick together.” He inclined his head slightly in the direction of Reynolds and Danny, not quite a nod but enough for Joel to know what he meant. At least the Scot was on his side.

They piled in and Paterson drove the short distance to the house.

“I saw the guy on the CCTV,” Joel said as they climbed out of the car. “He was upstairs, going into one of the rooms.”

“Want me to find him, Danny?” said Reynolds.

“Nah, leave him. There’s no need to go looking for trouble. All we care about is the money, right?”

Joel had taken a set of keys from the guard and he tried the most likely one on the front door. It turned.

"Beginner's luck," said Reynolds.

Danny slapped Joel on the back. "Hardly a beginner," he said. "This boy's the best lock man I know."

Not that long ago Joel would have smiled a little at the older man's praise, now it left him cold. It sounded empty to his ears like elevator music compared to a live band.

He pushed the door open and the four men walked into the house. Joel looked at his watch. There were less than thirteen minutes remaining. Thirteen minutes until a bunch of guys probably spoiling for a fight turned up in a minibus. Assuming the alarm had been triggered.

"Safe's in the office, right?" said Danny. "That's what Fuller said."

Joel nodded. He had an architect's plan of the house's layout in his pocket but he didn't need it; he'd memorised the location of the safe and he ran straight to it now. The office was off the spacious main hall, the door to it between that for the living room and a corridor that Joel knew ran to the kitchen. He saw as he ran to it that the door was ajar and the light inside it was on. Why? There was no reason for it to be. Was someone waiting inside, ready to guard the safe and the money inside? He paused at the door and nudged it with his foot, leaning his head around the door as it opened. Empty. He looked at his watch. 12:05. This might turn out alright after all; that was more than enough time to get the safe open.

He walked into the room and saw straight away that
cracking the safe was the least of his worries.

“Guys,” he shouted. “Here. Now.”

When the others walked in five seconds later they saw what Joel had. The oil painting of a naval battle was there, just as Fuller had told them it would be. It wasn’t on the wall hiding the safe though, it was laying across the desk. The safe was there like it was supposed to be, but it was open. And empty.

The four of them stood there in silence for a moment, looking at the empty space that should have contained a fortune.

“He’s taken it,” said Joel. “That’s what he was doing when I saw him. He’s taken it upstairs.”

“We’d better find the fucker then,” said Danny.

They ran to the stairs together. Joel was trying to recall the image he’d seen on the video monitor. He needed to find the room the figure had gone into as quickly as he could. How many bedrooms did the house have? Seven, he thought Fuller had said. Plus there were two bathrooms upstairs (not counting the en suites) and another office. Ten doors then. And when they found the door the dealer was behind they needed to get the cash off him. That twelve minutes wasn’t feeling so comfortable anymore. It’ll be less than that now, he thought, eleven probably.

He pushed past Danny and got to the top of the stairs first. The landing ran away from him and then turned to the right. It was brightly lit here, the landing lights on and further light streaming up from the open hallway at the bottom of the stairs. He pictured the video screen again. The image hadn’t been great but he was sure it was darker, the shadows longer as if the light source was further away. Joel ran along the landing, ignoring the doors on either side of him.

He remembered playing hide and seek in the children’s home. The kids did it every weekend in the autumn and winter on the long boring days when the weather was too bad to go outside to play. The house was big and old; full of dark corners and nooks and crannies. The role of the seeker was a coveted one, usually only given to the biggest, toughest kids. The slightly twisted rules they played in the home dictated that the seeker could give a dead arm to each of the hiders they found. In theory the strength of the punch delivered to the hider’s upper arm should reduce as the game progressed. The idea was simple: the sooner you got found the harder you got hit.

Joel was the best hider in the home. Partly it was because he had a patience that the other smaller kids didn’t have. Whereas many of the children got bored quickly and gave themselves away Joel did not. He liked being hidden. When he found somewhere and wriggled into the close darkness he felt a peace inside that he never achieved elsewhere. In bed at night he
could always hear the others; in the daytime he was surrounded by them; it was only when they played hide and seek that he really found solitude. He didn’t know if the fact that he was usually one of the last to be found meant that the punch he got was genuinely weaker. It certainly still hurt.

And then one day he got promoted to seeker. It was on his eighth birthday and some of the other kids spoke up for him and said he should get to do it, because it was his birthday and because he was so good at hiding.

The group accepted, he didn’t know if they really agreed or if there was some other reason. He worried a bit because it was so unexpected; what he felt most though was pride. Since the day when he’d hit the boy with the tray the other children had respected him but they’d avoided him too. Maybe this was the start of a change, he thought, maybe he was being accepted at last.

All the other kids hid and he counted to fifty like he was supposed to. He found the first one quickly because he knew where all the best hiding places were. He found the rest of them too, one after a
nother. As soon as he got to them every one of the children punched him on the arm. By the end of the game he even couldn’t lift it. The bruises were still there a week later.

Joel turned the corner on the landing and recognised the door right away. He ran to it and stopped, waiting for the others to catch up.

“You’re sure this is the room?” said Danny. Joel saw that he had the gun out again, clenched in his left hand.

“I’m sure.”

“Let’s do it then.”

Joel looked at his watch again before he opened the door. 9:55.

The handle turned easily and the door opened. The room
was empty.

Adventure Island was closed, not just because it was night but because it was winter. Eve knew how to get in though, because she visited it every year on the anniversary of her dad’s death. She did this in secret, in the evening, in the darkness. At first she felt bad for keeping it hidden from mum but she did it nevertheless. It was important to her that she had that connection with him still. She'd done it every year, eighteen now it must be. Some years she had to change how she got in because the previous year's entrance had been blocked but she always found a way. She used holes in fences, gates that she could pull open just enough to squeeze through, ladders that had been left by workmen. It was like one of the risk games she had played with her friends and that playfulness became part of her pilgrimage each year. Dad's memory was worth the risk and he would have loved the fun of it. The sneaking around was like one of the spy films he had enjoyed watching.

She carried on with it even after she discovered boys but she never brought one there, never even told any of them about it. Joel was the first.

She hadn't made her pilgrimage yet that year but she remembered how she'd got in the last time. A tear in a chain link fence that was invisible unless you looked at it from just the right angle.

She found it quickly, the hot dog hut next to it on the other side marking it out for her. Joel pulled the tear open for her and she squeezed through and then he did the same.

“I never went anywhere like this as a kid,” he said. “Not once.”

She’d been about to tell him about her dad but she stopped.

“Let’s find somewhere warmer.” It was even colder down here by the beach than it had been in the town. There was nothing to protect them from the chill wind blowing in from the North Sea but the occasional skeletal iron legs of the rides.

She knew there was a cafe there somewhere and she thought they might be able to get into it and shelter for a while. She led him through the maze of attractions all sitting there dormant waiting for the season to start again. There was a sadness to them, the melancholy feeling that emanated from things that weren’t being allowed to do what they were built for. The place felt like it had no point when it wasn’t filled with the sound of people having fun. The whole bloody town felt like that sometimes.

Dad’s ghost was here, or at least the memory of him. He’d have liked Joel, she was sure of it. Appreciated his humour and his relaxed way. It was hard for her to reconcile that easy going manner with the man she had seen fighting in the alleyway, or the one who had almost set fire to a car with two men in it.

“Would you have done it?” she said, as they started walking through the desolate park. “Blown their car up?”

Joel laughed. “I might have lit the shirt but I doubt the car would have gone up. It was more for effect than anything else. They may be on the other team but they’re just doing their job.”

“Nice job.”

“I’m no angel either, Eve. You’ve realised that much, right?”

“Yes,” she said. Did she care? That was the question wasn’t it? She didn’t think so, because she didn’t believe he could have done anything so terrible that she couldn’t forgive him. 

They reached the cafe and Eve pushed without much hope on the door. “Maybe there’s a window or something we can get open round the side.” she said.

Joel stopped her. He pulled a small pouch out of one of the pockets of his jacket. She watched as he took a couple of thin steel tools out of it and worked on the lock. He could feel her eyes on him and they made him feel hot, made his skin itch. He had always been proud of his skills as a lock man. But in that moment, with Eve next to him, he felt ashamed that the one thing he knew how to do well, the one thing he was talented at, was something so wrong.
Invasion, that was what he did. He invaded people’s homes and their lives.

Within
thirty seconds the lock clicked and he turned the handle, pushing the door open for her.

“This is what you do?” she said. He couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement, if there was disapproval there or something else.

“It’s what I did,” he said.

Eve looked at him, she could see the pain on his face and she knew that she was causing it, or at least that she could stop it. She just wasn't sure how.

“Come with me,” she said and led him into the room. It had the usual cheap Formica covered tables. She pulled out a chair and sat him on it. 

“Take your jacket off,” she said. “And your shirt.”

He looked surprised.

She laughed. "Don't get excited, it's too bloody cold for that
. I just want to check you're okay."

He pulled off his jacket and let it fall
to the floor on top of the bag. Eve walked behind the serving counter and found a small first aid kit there. When she turned back to him he was pulling his T-shirt over his head, wincing as he did it. She watched as his lean, muscled torso was slowly revealed. He looked just as good as she had imagined he would, despite the bruises that covered his pale flesh.

She walked back to him with the first aid kit in her hand, aware of how shallow her breathing had become at the sight of him. Focus, she thought, you’re supposed to be Florence Nightingale not bloody Jordan.

His shoulder was swollen. She prodded it gently with her fingers, feeling the heat of it from the blood pooled there. Everything felt like it was in place underneath the darkened flesh. He sucked in a breath at her touch but smiled through it. His stomach looked worse but she couldn’t see anything to suggest it was more than just a bad bruise.

“You’ll live,” she said. From the first aid kit she took a tube
of cream, she applied it to both areas, rubbing gently, massaging it in. His skin felt good. She found herself watching her hand as her fingers stroked across shoulder and upper chest. His torso was crossed with a light T of hair that ran between his nipples and then down over his sternum to his navel. Her fingers traced it down and then rubbed the cream into the bruise on his stomach. She could feel his abdominal muscles, rounded and firm. She could see the bulge in his jeans as her fingers moved lower.  

“Look,” she said, “whatever you’ve done in the past is behind us. I’ve only known you a few hours but...” She didn’t know how to end the sentence.

“You trust me,” he said, looking up at her, knowing what he had to do no matter how hard it was. This had gone too far, much too far, the stirring in his groin told him that. So did the beating of his heart.

“Yes,” she said. 

“Good, because I trust you too. And I care about you.” He paused and then said it, blurting the words out before he changed his mind. “That’s why I have to go Eve. I can’t drag you any further into this.”

He moved her hand away and
reached for his T-shirt.