Road Kill (25 page)

Now, I’d climbed aboard something with outrageous speed and power, that just begged me to lean that little bit further, push that little bit harder. Something that coaxed and beguiled and seduced me to take another risk. And would kill me in a heartbeat if I let it get away from me.

I got off the motorway just after Forton services, intending to drop into the south side of Lancaster. Last night’s downpour had washed all the diesel off the long curving slip road and the roundabout at the end of it, and I took full advantage of the fact.

I stooged along the A6 through Galgate village, the FireBlade shivering with compressed violence as I kept it down to thirty. It was hard to get it out of my mind that only a few minutes earlier I’d been going a hundred miles an hour faster than this.

I rode with my right fore- and index fingers hooked lightly over the front brake lever, just in case of any stupid moves from other traffic. And I suppose that a part of my mind was looking for any sign of a certain Transit van with a broken rear window. Or one that had been very recently repaired.

To keep the bike humming along all it took was the slightest pressure of my right hand on the throttle. It seemed that I barely had to increase the input to overtake a slow-moving caravan. The ‘Blade just zipped past it, contemptuous.

When the lights opposite the sprawling urban mass of the university went red against me, I automatically filtered down the white line until I had my nose stuck out between the first two cars in the queue.

The driver to my left shot me a disdainful glance. I glared back.
You lookin’ at me?
He ducked his head away quickly, suddenly intent on retuning his radio.

In a detached way I recognised that the FireBlade had altered not just my riding style but my whole personality, the way beautiful clothes can make you walk sexier. It had nothing to do with the mechanics. It was a state of mind.

Like now. I wasn’t prepared to wait dutifully in a line of traffic any more, I wanted – no, I
deserved
– to be out there in front. Was I showing my assertiveness, I wondered, or just being plain arrogant?

Either way, was it going to be enough to enable me to take on the Devil’s Bridge Club at their own game?

***

The RLI was home to its usual swirling population of the worried and the exhausted and the sick. And then there were the patients.

I wasn’t quite sure why I’d come to see Clare as soon as I’d hit town. According to Jamie, the auditions for the Devil’s Bridge Club weren’t until tomorrow evening, but I suppose I just wanted to find out if she had changed her mind. Or was prepared to tell me what was really on it.

When I walked onto the ward the curtain between Clare’s bed and the next was drawn halfway along to provide some privacy but I could just see Jacob sitting on the far side, near the window. My stride faltered a little. He already knew Clare had asked me to look out for Jamie but I wasn’t sure how much else I could say without arousing his suspicions.

Jacob and Clare were both my friends and I hated the feeling that I was being sneaky with him. I’d already decided that if he asked me a direct question, I wasn’t prepared to lie. But, at the same time, there was no point in prompting him to ask. And anyway, if he’d been here all day, how much had Clare told him?

It wasn’t until I reached the foot of the bed and they looked up that I realised Clare had a second visitor who’d been hidden by the curtain. Not someone I would have expected to be sitting at the bedside of the girl who was living with her husband.

Isobel.

“Charlie!” Clare said, before I had time to do much more than stare. She gave me a smile that was strained and relieved at the same time, as though my arrival had put paid to a difficult conversation.

Jacob nodded to me, cordial, his anger of the morning seemingly forgotten or at least temporarily put aside.

“Hi,” I said.

“You and Isobel have met, I believe,” Jacob said without inflection.

Isobel shifted in her seat, juggling the handbag on her lap as though preparing to offer me a hand to shake. It seemed a ludicrous gesture given the circumstances of our previous encounter. I was carrying my helmet in one hand and I forestalled her by pointedly jamming the other into the pocket of my leathers.

“Yes,” I said, stony. And, with more of a challenge: “Eamonn not with you today?”

Isobel hesitated a moment, something scuttering across her face too fast for me to latch on to, then she settled back with a carefully pained expression.

“No. Look, I wanted to apologise about that, Charlie,” she said quickly, sounding for all the world sincere. “Eamonn can be so over-protective and sometimes he gets a bit carried away.” Her voice might be placatory but there was something calculating in her eyes. “I suppose he’s very much like that young man of yours, in that respect.”

I ignored the jibe, if that’s what it was. Hell, Isobel might have meant it as a compliment.

Jacob looked round. “Where is Sean, by the way?”

“Away,” I said shortly.

Isobel looked smug at this news, as though she’d won a victory. She got to her feet and smiled, somewhat cloyingly I thought, at Clare.

“Right, I’ll leave you to it,” she said, bracing, as though Clare was just about to nip out and do a little shopping.

“Don’t forget to sign those papers,” Jacob said. He reached for Clare’s hand, lying limply on the folded-back sheet, and gave it a squeeze. “We want to get this sorted as soon as we can.”

“Of course.” Isobel’s smile became even sicklier. “Well, now I’ve found that certificate I can get on with it,” she said, her eyes locked on their entwined fingers. “You’ll be very happy together, I’m sure.”

The way she managed to inject just the faintest whiff of doubt into such otherwise hearty tones was a masterclass, all by itself.

After Isobel had gone I peeled off my leather jacket and took the chair she’d vacated. It was unbearably hot near the window and the two oscillating electric fans the staff had set up did little more than stir the warm air about a bit.

Clare looked tired and overheated, her normally lustrous long blonde hair hanging lank around her face.

“Are you OK?” I asked. Stupid question to ask anyone lying in a hospital bed, I know, but there are degrees of OK.

“Are
you
OK?” She smiled faintly. “Jacob said you’d come off the RGV.”

I glanced at him sharply. Had he avoided telling her about the van that had played a considerable part because it was too close to the bone?

He gave me the slightest nod, little more than a slow blink.
Yes.

“I’m fine,” I said cheerfully, reaching up to push my hair out of my eyes. “The bike’s looking a bit worse for wear but it’s a good excuse to get that wacky paint job I’ve always wanted, I suppose.”

She frowned, her face anxious. “Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve got a hell of a bruise on your arm.”

I followed her gaze and discovered a mottled deep aubergine-coloured blotch across the outside of my left forearm, fading to yellow at the edges like my skin was sucking the colours out of it one at a time. The bruise ran in a narrow diagonal line across my arm and it hadn’t come from any accidental source. I dropped my arm quickly.

“That was Isobel’s little playmate, yesterday afternoon,” I said. “I don’t suppose she happened to mention that part of it, did she?”

Jacob frowned. “She said she was looking for a copy of our marriage certificate,” he said. “I’ve been nagging her to get the paperwork for the divorce sorted at her end for the last couple of months. She’d told me it was all in hand and reckons she was too embarrassed to admit that she had lost her copy.”

“So why was she ransacking the study when I arrived?”

He gave a half-smile. “Depends on your definition of ransacking,” he said. “I remember, if she was looking for something in a kitchen drawer she’d be likely to pull the whole drawer out of the dresser and tip it upside down onto the floor. Isobel’s just like that.”

“So if I’m exaggerating, why did she bring that tame psycho with her and set him onto me like a bloody attack dog?”

“According to her, Sean broke his nose.”

I sighed in frustration. “Yes, but that was
after
Eamonn had already started in on me and threatened to break both my ankles,” I said, my voice low with anger. “He went after me with an asp, for heaven’s sake. You don’t carry one of those for any other reason than to hit people, Jacob. It’s a tool of the trade.”

Jacob didn’t reply to that and I realised that I was probably reaping the rewards of having been so accusative with him this morning. Sean and I had gone in hard and lost his trust. Now it was payback time. I swallowed, trying to clear the bitter taste in my mouth.

“So what was Isobel doing here?” I asked, as calmly as I could.

“She came to see Clare,” Jacob said. I glanced at Clare and the look on her face told me what she thought about that.
Came to gloat, more like
. “And,” he went on, “she wanted to talk about Jamie.”

Because I was already watching Clare’s face I saw the flash of fear cross it at the mention of Jamie’s name. She disentangled her hand from Jacob’s to push herself a little more upright in the bed. The whole of the framework attached to her legs creaked as it readjusted.

“What about him?” I said.

“She doesn’t want him to go on this Devil’s Bridge Club outing either,” Jacob said. “She thinks that these lads he’s fallen in with will get him into trouble.”

“I’ve already told Charlie about this,” Clare said quickly, as though trying to hurry him off the subject.

“If you’re all so worried about him, why don’t you just tell him not to go?” I said, looking at Jacob again.

He grunted. “You’ve never had kids have you, Charlie?” he said and I thought I saw Clare flinch. “When they get beyond about four years old you can’t just
tell
them to do anything. You can suggest and persuade and that’s about it.”

“And you’ve tried suggesting and persuading him?”

“Mm. Waste of breath. Like trying to get him to eat spinach when he was a little boy,” he said and he smiled a little sadly. “Didn’t matter how many Popeye stories we told him. Wouldn’t touch the stuff.”

We lapsed into contemplative silence. Clare looked as though she was about to burst into tears at any moment.
Oh God, what a mess.

“So,” I said, tentative, “do you still want me to go to Ireland with him?”

“Yes!” Clare said. “Charlie, I—”

“It’s all right, love,” Jacob interrupted, his voice firm but gentle. “Charlie will look after him, don’t you worry.”

A young nurse appeared round the edge of the curtain. She was wearing a polythene pinny and gloves and carrying a bowl of antiseptic wipes and paper towel.

“Sorry to barge in on you,” she said, sounding a lot more cheery than the nurse who’d thrown me out previously, “but we need to get those pins twiddled don’t we, Clare?”

Whatever she was planning to do, it sounded nasty. Jacob and I obediently got to our feet.

“We’ll go and grab a coffee, give you half an hour,” he said, bending to kiss Clare’s cheek. She put her arms round him and gave him a big hug, close to tears.

We moved away. The nurse had whizzed the curtains fully shut around the bed before we’d reached the ward door.

“What on earth is she going to do?” I asked.

“They have to manipulate the skin round where the pins go in, otherwise they heal into your flesh,” Jacob said, matter-of-fact. “First time they ever put me in an ex-fix they weren’t too assiduous about doing it. Hurt like the very devil when they took it out, I can tell you.”

We found a vending machine and took our coffees outside into the sunshine where there was enough of a breeze to make it cooler.

“So, did Clare tell you anything about what happened?”

“There was a van,” he said. “A white Transit with bull bars on the front of it. She said it seemed to swerve twice before it hit them, like it was a determined effort.”

“And never stopped,” I muttered. “Bastard.”

“Oh he stopped all right,” Jacob said, his voice grim. “Clare said she remembers lying in the middle of the road and seeing the brake lights come on, and hearing the transmission wind up as it went into reverse, like he was coming back for another go.”

“Jesus.”

“And then she heard more bikes approaching and the van just took off. For obvious reasons I didn’t tell her about the van that chased you to Gleet’s,” he added, his voice a little bitter now. “She’s got nothing to do but lay there and worry as it is.”

“Why didn’t she tell me the truth?” I asked quietly. “Why did she claim she couldn’t remember, when it sounds like she remembers only too well?”

Jacob frowned. “Jamie,” he said, and that churning feeling crept back into my stomach. “She says when he came in to see her yesterday morning he begged her not to say anything.”