Part 32 (1/2)

She turned to look at Michael. He had bathed, shaved; wore a clean s.h.i.+rt and a pair of jeans. In the dim light his face was all crags and valleys, and she had to suppress an impulse to reach out and touch the scar on his chin. He'd probably be no less surprised if she made a grab for his crotch.

To shake the thought from her head, she said, 'Tell me about Tommy.'

'Tommy?'

'You're in this for him. He must have been special.'

'He was okay.' For a while it looked like that was all she was going to get: He was okay. Then he said, 'What did you want to know?'

'Anything. Just what he was like.'

'What he was like,' said Michael. He had a can of beer with him he popped now, and offered her a swallow. She shook her head.

'We were in this bar once, Tommy and me. On leave. We'd had a bad day. Tommy liked to bet, and he'd lost heavily that afternoon, and he was really p.i.s.sed off. Looking for a fight.'

He took a long pull from the beer can, then rubbed his lower lip with a thumb.

'There was a man in the bar, Tommy decided he was the one. I don't know why.' He rapped a quick tattoo with his knuckles on the can. Some way off, the dog barked again. 'You ever see one of those arguments where one guy just wants to live quiet, and the other guy wants to break bones? There was nothing he could say Tommy didn't take wrong. He'd be, Let's buy you a drink, and Tommy was, What are you saying, I'm an alcoholic? You calling me a drunk? Guy must've thought he'd wandered into a nuthouse. He'd say, I'm leaving now, Tommy said, No you're not. Everybody knew what was going to happen. n.o.body got in the way.'

Sarah felt the breeze s.h.i.+ft direction. From inside the inn came the sounds of crockery, as the staff cleared up.

'He wasn't built or anything, this bloke, just average. Tommy was like me to look at, but you could bounce bricks off him all night long. Anyway, it happened. He followed this bloke outside, someone he'd never met, had never done him harm, and beat him half to death. I pulled him off eventually. I could have put an end to it sooner, but only by killing him. The way you have to some kinds of dog.'

He turned and placed the empty can on the arm of the bench. Then looked at Sarah.

'Well, what did you expect? He was nice to animals, kind to children? You want to hear about him carrying Maddy's picture, crying himself to sleep over Dinah? He went with wh.o.r.es, Tucker, and he got in fights, and if the other guy was better than him, he'd hit him from behind. Because that's what he did. He was a soldier, he was a good soldier. But he wasn't a nice man.'

'And he's the reason you're looking for Dinah?'

'No. Maddy is.'

It was as if a picture she had been looking at turned out to be upside down, and no revision of her former opinion was going to make her look less foolish. But Michael didn't hang around to hear about how she'd got things wrong. She looked up at the stars once more, and then looked round for him, but he'd left.

Sarah Tucker, she thought. You complete and utter idiot.

She wasn't sure how much longer she sat there in the dark. When she went inside at last, and up to their room, Michael was already in bed: she slipped into the bathroom as quietly as she could, and had a tepid shower. Exhausted. I am exhausted, she thought her mind still racing from untamed thoughts. Using a fresh T-s.h.i.+rt as a nightie, and pulling a pair of pants on, she went back into the bedroom, which was small, with thin curtains no match for the moonlight, so a bluish cast settled on all it held: the electric fire, the dusty shelf with its scatter of tourist-objects, the small bedside table on which sat an unused ashtray. The bed itself. Michael lay still as a corpse beneath its covers, though Sarah knew he was awake, and knew, too, that he knew she knew. I know you know I know you know I know. All those hours in that hotel room: he'd know her by her breathing in the dark. By the smell of her hair when it needed shampoo.

She sat lightly on the side of the bed. He made no movement, nor any noise, but his eyes shone wet in the blue light, a trick of the moon suggesting him capable of tears.

'Michael?'

No reply.

'She's your daughter. Isn't she?'

'She's Tommy's kid.'

'You know that for a fact?'

'Who knows anything? For a fact.'

'Don't run from this.'

Then his hand appeared from darkness and gripped her own by the wrist. 'What do you want me to say?' He held her so tight she could take her own pulse. 'That I loved my friend's wife? That I wanted his life?' He let go. She'd have a bruise by morning; a bracelet of used pain, to match the necklace Rufus left her with. 'We both f.u.c.ked things up, Tommy and me. But I had more excuse. If I'd had Maddy, I'd never have . . .'

'Never what?'

'I wouldn't be here. Maybe none of us would.'

There's something he's not told me, she thought.

He sat up, the sheet falling from his bare chest. It was curiously hairless: a boy's torso. The red weals cast him like a tiger, or its cage. 'I've seen how you look at me when you think I don't notice.'

(She could hardly deny what was coming.) 'I'm a killer, right? I shot that guy in front of you, and it doesn't matter he'd've killed you, it puts me down in your eyes. I shot him, and that chokes you off.'

'I don't care what you've done.'

'You don't know half of it.'

'Michael '

'I loved her. Okay? And he treated her like s.h.i.+t. I saw the bruises, you think that didn't matter? I've killed people, so what's a knock or two? f.u.c.k it, I'd have ripped his heart out. But she'd have spat in my face while she fitted him together again.'

'Why did you stay with him?'

'She asked me to.'

He brushed a hand across his forehead: wiping the thought away.

'Did you ever . . .'

'f.u.c.k her?'

'Okay. f.u.c.k her.'

'What do you think?'

Of course he had. Else he'd know for a fact he wasn't Dinah's He said, 'It doesn't matter. None of it matters.'

'Tommy had to go and see her,' she said softly. 'That's why . . .' It was why they'd been killed; what gave Rufus Axel his opportunity.

'It's not that he had to see her. He had to make sure she wasn't seeing anybody else.'

'Did he know '

'Oh, sure he knew.' He lay back, his eyes reflecting the pale insignificant light. 'Sure he knew,' he said again.

Which was what hurt, she thought, lying down now beside him. That he'd only stuck by Tommy for his love for Tommy's wife. And that Tommy knew it.

Neither spoke for a long while, but when Sarah s.h.i.+vered suddenly a goose running over her grave Michael lifted the sheet so she could slide beneath it. And there she put her arms round him, finding this not so very different, after all, from the other night they'd spent in the same bed. Like cold figures on a stone tomb, she recalled. And now, though wrapped together, there was still that sense of epitaph in their embrace, though over whose grave they were joined tonight, she could not imagine.