Road Kill (35 page)

He swallowed but before he could reply we heard footsteps approaching and the murmur of voices. An elderly couple appeared, dressed up to the nines, and stopped outside a door further up the corridor while they hunted for their key.

Jamie waited until the door had closed behind the couple, then jerked his head towards the room opposite Tess’s. “Look,” he muttered, “let’s talk about this inside, yeah?”

He produced his own key out of his jeans pocket and shoved it into the lock. Inside, the room was very similar to mine, maybe a touch smaller and the twin beds were both singles. I recognised Paxo’s leathers hanging on the wardrobe door.

Jamie caught my glance. “No-one wants to share with William,” he said by way of explanation. “He snores like an industrial buzz saw. It’s bad enough being in the same building.”

There was a little nervous catch to his voice as he spoke, as though he’d suddenly realised that by inviting me in like this he’d potentially put himself in harm’s way.

I leaned my shoulder against the wall next to the doorway, blocking his escape route.

“Why did you need the ten thousand, Jamie?”

“Oh, erm, well, I wanted to buy a new bike and—”

“Don’t,” I said. The single-word command worked much better on Jamie than it had done on Sean. He shut up like I’d just hit the mute button on the remote control.

“Clare’s already told me that you came to her in trouble and she agreed to lend you the money,” I said. “All I want to know is why you needed it. The truth. What’s Daz got on you?”

“
Daz
?” Jamie squawked. “No, no, no. It’s not Daz who—”

He broke off, realising he’d been suckered, and gave me a smile of self-derision.

“OK,” I said, folding my arms. “Who is it?”

He moved over to the bed and sat down nearly as heavily as Tess had done, putting his knees on his elbows and slowly rubbing his face with both hands.

“Look, I borrowed some money about a month ago from Eamonn.”

“Eamonn?” I said, trying to tone down the disbelief in my voice. “Everyone’s favourite philanthropist?”

He lifted his head, flushing. “Yeah, I know that might seem stupid to you, but he’s been an OK kind of a guy, y’know? Up ‘til then, anyway. I-I needed some dosh and Mum wouldn’t lend it to me. Eamonn overheard one of the rows we had about it and the next day he just handed it to me – in cash, just like that.”

“And you didn’t think to ask what he might want in return for this princely gesture?”

“Of course I did,” he said, scowling. “He just fobbed me off, y’know?”

“How long did it take him to change his mind?”

Jamie’s scowl deepened. “Couple of weeks,” he muttered. “He was apologetic at first, then started getting creepy about Mum, said as how he didn’t want this to hurt her.”

“In what way?”

“Fuck me, I don’t know! You think I wanted him to spell it out for me?”

“And that’s when you went to Clare.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Why did you want Clare to meet you at Devil’s Bridge? Why not just go to the house?”

Jamie looked glum. “I didn’t want Dad to know about it and I didn’t know he wasn’t at home until—” he broke off, shrugged, “—well, afterwards.”

“And did Eamonn know about this?”

“Probably – through Mum.”

I was silent for a moment, considering. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance that Eamonn went after Clare – and Slick – because he wanted to keep you in his debt, is there?” I asked mildly.

Jamie’s head had begun to drop but now it snapped up. He jerked to his feet, suddenly restless. “No way,” he said, shaking his head like he could shudder the thought free. “No. Eamonn wasn’t even in the country last Sunday. He was somewhere in Europe – flew back into Manchester on Monday. Mum went over to collect him from the airport.”

I refrained from pointing out that Eamonn didn’t have to be driving the van himself in order to be responsible for it.

“So how did they know about the crash?”

“I spoke to Mum on Sunday night,” he muttered. “I told her then. She must have told Eamonn when she picked him up.”

“And they decided they’d see what they could nick from the house before Jacob got back,” I said.

I looked up in time to see a guilty expression flirt across Jamie’s face and suddenly I put it all together.

“But there wasn’t anything to nick, was there, Jamie?” I said quietly, “Because you’d already been into the safe and grabbed the money before your mother arrived. All that stuff she came out with about us being after the same thing. She just wanted the cash and, when she realised I either didn’t have it or wasn’t going to let go of it, she set Eamonn onto me.” I saw by his face I’d got it nailed and the realisation fired my anger. “Didn’t you give a shit about what had just happened to Clare?”

Jamie stopped pacing in front of me, put his hands on my arms. “Look, Charlie, I—”

At that moment there was the rattle of a key in the lock. The door swung open and Paxo walked in. He stopped abruptly when he saw the two of us, frozen like that, and a sly grin spread across his face.

“Oops – sorry,” he said, totally unrepentant. “Didn’t know I was interrupting anything. You want me to go and come back later, mate? Or can I stay and join in?”

Jamie’s hands dropped away like he’d just had his fingers burned. I levered myself off the wall.

“I was just leaving,” I said, stalking out past Paxo with as much dignity as I could manage. “And anyway, Pax, I hardly think I’m your type – for a start, I’m not inflatable.”

Back in my own room I was too tired to spend much time turning over what Jamie had told me. I stripped off my clothes and cleaned my teeth before climbing straight into bed. There’d be time to dissect it all in the morning – when Sean was back.

The realisation of just how much I missed him, needed him, came to me right on the edge of sleep. It was my last conscious thought before I pitched into the comforting darkness.

***

I woke. The room was still blacked out and the building was silent but I knew something was different. Something was wrong.

I sat up and was about to reach for the bedside light when there was a quiet slither from across the other side of the room. The small lamp on the chest of drawers by the TV clicked on. I winced at the sudden glare, screwing my eyes up until they’d had a chance to adjust.

Sean sat in the chair next to the drawers. He was wearing his T-shirt and leather jeans, and his bike jacket was laid across the bed next to mine. He still had his hand on the lamp switch and, when I was able to focus again, I saw that he was smiling.

“Don’t you ever knock?” I demanded, surprise and the sudden awakening making me grumpy. “How did you get in?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said easily, “and you really should remember to use the security chain. That lock was hardly much of a challenge.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said.

He got to his feet, untucking the T-shirt and starting to gather it upwards from the hem. My heart started to thunder so hard I almost had to raise my voice to be heard over it.

“What are you doing?”

He stilled in mid-undress. I had to force myself not to stare at the expanse of smooth flat skin already on show.

“Making use of your spare bed,” he said. “It’s too late to check in – even if they’d held a room for me – but I didn’t want to climb in until you’d woken up. You’d probably have killed me.” He was only half joking.

“Oh, well in that case, make yourself at home,” I said, trying for casual.

He smiled. “Thanks.” And with that he disappeared into the bathroom.

I lay down again and stared at the ceiling. I knew I should have been thinking about what Sean might have found out after he split off from the rest of us, but the fact that the Vauxhall had turned up at the hotel shortly after we did seemed to answer that one.

Instead, my brain was being ruled by my body. By the opportunity presented by having Sean in the bed next to mine.
What if . . .?

The bathroom door opened and he clicked off the light. He’d stripped down to his shorts and now he draped his leathers across a chair and turned back the covers on the other bed.

Go on. Ask him. Invite him
. . .

He moved across to the light by the TV and reached for the switch.

“Sean—”

He paused, glancing back to me. His eyes were in shadow and I couldn’t read his face.

“What is it, Charlie?” His voice was gentle.

My nerve failed me.

“Erm, goodnight,” I said.

“Goodnight, Charlie,” he said softly, and plunged the room into blackness again.

***

The next thing I knew I was sitting bolt upright in bed with my breath coming fast and shallow and my eyes wide open. I had no concept of the passing of time. It seemed I’d only just let my head fall back and it had bounced me straight up again.

For some reason this second disturbance of my sleep brought with it a burst of unreasoned rage. I froze, listening for a repeat of the sound that had woken me, prepared to lash out. Then it came again and, with a sense of profound shock, I recognised it for what it was.

Someone was crying.

The realisation snuffed out my anger instantly, dried my mouth yet threatened to wet my eyes. Slowly, I swung my legs out of bed and sat there, gripping the edge of the mattress. The silence went on long enough for me to imagine it must have been part of a dream, where nothing comes as a surprise. Not even the idea of a man like Sean Meyer weeping in the night.

And then I heard it. Little more than a gasp, a catch in his breath, brim full of anguish and pain. My night-dilated eyes could just make out Sean’s restless figure amid the snarled-up sheets only a metre or so away. For a moment I did nothing more than watch him sleep and listen to him dream.

The dream was hot enough to make him sweat, savage enough to send his heartrate soaring, and dark enough to force out quiet whimpers from between his clamped lips. Trapped in slumber, his subconscious was free to torture him at will.

I had nights like that myself.

I leaned over and stole a hand across the bedclothes. I found his twisting fingers and crept my own between them. He gripped tight, blindly, not knowing I was there. Instinct taking succour where it was offered, like a frightened child.

I suffered from my own nightmares. It had never occurred to me that Sean must have his monsters to face, too.

On the surface he seemed so calm, so solid and, despite what I might have thrown at him in anger, so in control. I’d never considered his doubt or pain. Yet here he was, crying out in his sleep and needing comfort of his own. Did I really have anything to offer him that hadn’t been irreparably damaged in transit?

Hesitant, I stood, pushed back the sheets and slid into bed alongside him, reaching out to him. His body was heated, febrile, so that where our skin touched I almost expected it to sizzle. For a second he resisted, tried to push me away. If he’d continued I think I would have let him, but he didn’t.

He seemed to rise a layer out of the hell where he’d been burning. Not enough to wake, but enough to recognise me. Or somebody like me.

He let me slink under his arm, sneak my head onto his shoulder and wrap my limbs across his shuddering body, anchoring him in this reality. His roughened chin skimmed the top of my head. I could feel his breath in my hair, slowing.

I lay awake and listened as his body began to drift, as his pulse climbed down. And I decided, fiercely, that I would give as much as I was able to. As much as Sean would take. Two broken halves could not necessarily be put back together to form a whole, but I had to try.

For both our sakes.

When I opened my eyes the following morning, it was to find Sean lying on his side facing me, arm bent, head propped on his hand.

“Hi,” he said quietly, giving me one of those slow-release smiles.

“Hi yourself,” I said, feeling my breath hitch, my heart stutter. I stretched, hiding a yawn together with my self-consciousness behind my hand. “What is it with you and watching me sleep?”

He laughed, little more than a bubble of amusement, and reached to smooth a tangle of hair out of my eyes, using that distraction to neatly dodge the question. “You’re very peaceful when you sleep.”

“Not always,” I said. I paused. “And neither are you.”

The smile faded and Sean rolled away onto his back. The light filtering through the thin curtains touched on the healed scar at his shoulder and just for a moment I wished all his injuries had been merely physical. Instead, the one that had hurt him the most was the savage blow to his psyche and, as I well knew, treating those wounds could be a much more hit-and-miss affair.