Part 26 (2/2)

He shook his head, then turned and drew the curtains. There was a small lamp on the bedside table he turned on, then offered her water. She wasn't thirsty. He poured a gla.s.s to the brim, and drained it in one long swallow.

'What was it called?' she asked. 'The island?'

'I could find it on a map.'

'And where've you been since?'

'When?'

'All the time you've been playing dead. Where did you hide?'

He didn't answer, but picked up the remote control, and buzzed the TV back to life: artillery traces swept across a black sky like screaming angels. And Sarah thought of snipers cloistered high over city streets; of mortar sh.e.l.ls wrecking schools and marketplaces. She thought of dark nights and roadblocks, and civilians poured into ma.s.s graves. There were only so many livings a soldier might earn.

'Did she know?'

'Who?'

'Maddy. Tommy's wife. Did she know you were '

'No. She thought we were dead.'

He snapped the TV off again, as if underlining a point.

She felt she needed breathing s.p.a.ce, a time to absorb the information he'd given her. In a former life, she'd have headed for open air: walked her limbs ragged and cleaned her lungs out, given her mind a chance to catch up. Tonight, she didn't want to leave this room. The story he'd told her: it was as if the reality of it was waiting outside, and it was only in here she'd be safe. As for what had happened to her, her own sad tale, she'd hardly begun to believe it. Though already a full day had pa.s.sed since Rufus attacked her, making ancient history of everything that had gone before. And she wondered what poor Maddy had thought, finding her husband delivered from the grave. She must have believed her life was starting over; all the time Rufus was waiting to take it away.

It was as if he'd read her thoughts. 'Tell me about him.'

'Rufus?'

'If that was his name.'

'He called himself Axel,' she remembered.

'Tell me anyway.'

So she told him about Wigwam instead; not about the wacky clothes and the sixties mind-set, but about the woman who was her friend, who had struggled to bring up four children despite an abusive partner who had popped out one day for the legendary can of lager, and never come back.

'Literally,' Sarah said. 'A can of lager.'

Michael looked away.

And then Rufus showed up. To call it a whirlwind romance underestimated the weather. Sarah had dropped in one morning and found Wigwam had a husband.

'Cover,' Michael said.

'I know that now.'

'He was waiting for Tommy. An agent in place.'

'They knew he'd turn up?'

'They knew where Maddy and Dinah lived.'

Some men b.u.g.g.e.red off in search of the Eternal Off-Licence; others just b.u.g.g.e.red off, period. Some went into hiding to save their lives, but had to come back for their children.

'So what about you? Why didn't you just disappear again?'

He didn't answer.

'A man's gotta do?' she asked, surprised at her own venom. 'n.o.body blows up your best buddy while you're around?'

'Oh, macho, sure.' He looked at her. 'There was something Tommy used to say. ”Remember Buddy Holly's last words? f.u.c.k it. We're all going to die.”'

'And that's how soldiers talk.'

'He was a soldier, yes. It's how he talked, that's all. What's Dinah to you, anyway?'

'She was a child,' Sarah said after a long pause. 'I just thought somebody should make sure she was all right.'

Michael said, 'That guy. Rufus. Axel? The day after the bomb, he was hanging round the house, or what was left of it. And every day after.'

'But there were loads of people like that. Sightseers.'

'He wasn't watching the fire crews. He was watching the people watching the fire crews. He was waiting for me. Besides, I recognized him.'

'You knew him?'

'Knew the type. He was a killer.'

'Rufus?'

'Was I wrong?'

He hadn't been wrong.

'I knew he killed Maddy and Tommy. If anyone knew where Dinah went, he did.'

She had Dinah to thank for her life, then. If Michael hadn't been following Rufus, he'd never have heard her alarm.

'I'd have killed him anyway,' he said.

She knew that too. It troubled her that it didn't upset her more.

'Why haven't they found him?' she asked.

'They have.'

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