Part 12 (1/2)

'What?'

He shook his head. Turned away. 'Nothing. There's, uh ...' he waved a hand vaguely at the cupboards '... sesame oil in the one at the end, if you want it.'

He went back to the living room. Sally folded the tabard and put it on the worktop, watching him carefully. He stopped in the doorway, looped up a professional-style tool-belt, bristling with chisels and hammer handles, and strapped it to his waist. Then he picked up the nail gun, switched it on, and began firing nails into the doorframe. He didn't once turn to look at her. Over the months she'd learned that, from time to time, Steve had moods like this, when something would preoccupy him. One or two clients would leave him quiet and introspective for days, as if he'd peeped into a world he wished he hadn't known about. Maybe now he was thinking about an upcoming trip he was supposed to be making on Sat.u.r.day a client in Seattle he needed to visit. That, or maybe the meeting he'd had yesterday in London: he'd been anxious about that before he'd left, before Millie had got up. He'd been vague about who he was meeting perhaps it had been Mooney. The one whose name she was supposed to forget.

She went back to the fridge. Tuna steaks in greaseproof paper oozed red on the middle shelf. There was a pot of basil that looked to have been bought from the farmers' market, some gherkins and, when she delved deep, an old jar of capers. She'd make salsa verde salsa verde. She took the ingredients out and began to chop, her eyes sliding across the room to Steve as she worked. Every time he drove a nail into the doorframe she jumped.

She'd finished the sauce and was heating the oil in the pan with her back to the room when the sound of a nail being fired was followed by a loud clatter. She put down the pan and turned. He was standing with his side to her, his left hand placed high on the doorframe, the other pressed against the wall. The nail gun was on the floor where it had fallen, turning slowly on its axis. He had his head down and was perfectly still, except for his left leg, which was moving spasmodically up and down as if he was kicking himself. He looked sideways at her, his face grey, pinched.

'Think I've f.u.c.ked my hand, Sally, if you'll forgive the expression.' His teeth were clenched. He jerked his head in the direction of his left hand, not raising his eyes to it. 'Gun hit a knot, slipped. I've got to a.s.sume I've really f.u.c.ked it. Would you have a look?'

She turned off the gas and hurried across to him. The hand looked normal at first glance, just as if it was resting there, the fingers pointing up to the ceiling, but, closer to it, she saw what had happened. He'd skewered himself to the wall. She stood on tiptoe and examined it.

'What?' he said tightly. 'What can you see?'

She could see the steely gleam of a nail head poking out from the fleshy pad below his thumb. She could see a single, oily line of blood running from the site of the wound to the wrist, where it split into a delta that continued down through the hair on his arm. And she could picture more she could imagine the musculature and bone structure inside, because it was what she'd seen almost thirty years ago on the X-ray of her own hand after the accident with Zoe. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to get past that image. It always made her feel inescapably sad. 'I'm not sure,' she said. 'I don't know about these things.'

'OK.' He wiped his face with his free hand. 'See that hacksaw?'

She crouched and rummaged through the toolkit. 'This?'

'No. That one.'

'What?' She picked it up shakily. 'What've I got to do?'

'Cut the nail. Between my hand and the wall.'

'Cut it?'

'Yes. Please, Sally, just do it. I'm not asking you to cut my hand off.'

'OK, OK.' She went quickly to the cupboard under the sink and pulled out two rolls of kitchen towel. She got a chair, sc.r.a.ped it up to where he stood and climbed on it to inspect the wound. Tongue between her teeth, she pressed the area around it. Steve winced and sucked in a breath, rolled his head around once or twice as if he was trying to release a crick in his neck. The skin on his thumb was stretched sideways: the nail had only pierced the side of the muscle. It wasn't as bad as she'd thought.

'OK.' Her heart was thumping. 'I don't think it's too serious.'

'Just do it.'

Her hands were slippery with sweat but she pushed her fingers between the wall and his flesh and gently pulled at it, pus.h.i.+ng it along the nail away from the wall, until about a centimetre of the shaft was visible between skin and wall.

'Jesus.' He dropped his head, teeth clenched, and his foot kicked harder. 'Jesus f.u.c.king Christ.'

Tentatively she raised the hacksaw, edging the blade into the s.p.a.ce between the wall and the hand, lowering it until it bit into the shaft of the nail. Steve stopped talking and went still. His eyes rested on her face. She moved the saw back and forth experimentally once or twice. He'd gone curiously quiet. She adjusted the blade and felt it lock into the metal, knew it was right, and began to saw.

'Sally,' he whispered suddenly, while she worked, 'I really need you.'

Her eyes shot to him and she saw something she'd never seen in them before something naked and scared. When he had said 'need' he had meant more than just needing her to cut him away from the wall. It was a bigger 'need' than that. She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could the blade slipped through the metal and the nail came apart. Steve's hand dropped and the head of the nail fell out of it. He took a couple of steps back and she jumped off the chair and caught him, lifted the hand and held wads of kitchen towels round it to stem the blood. She made him sit down, his hand positioned on his shoulder.

'Take deep breaths.'

He shook his head. His T-s.h.i.+rt had dark circles of sweat at the neck and under the arms. There was a fine spatter of blood on the floor and the tools were scattered all over the place. After a minute or two, he spoke. 'Yesterday was the most f.u.c.king awful day, Sally.'

'Yes.' She crouched, peering up into his grey face. 'Something's happened, hasn't it?'

He looked up at the ceiling as if he was trying to find a steady place to rest his eyes and keep everything together. 'It's work. f.u.c.king c.r.a.p c.r.a.p c.r.a.p c.r.a.p c.r.a.p c.r.a.p.'

'Is it America?'

'No. G.o.d, no that's a breeze. It was the meeting. In London. With ... You know who I was meeting.'

Mooney, she thought. I was right. 'What happened?'

There was a long silence. Then he turned his grey eyes back to her and looked at her seriously. 'I got offered a novel way to earn thirty K. No tax. Would solve all your problems in the blink of an eye.'

'What?'

'Killing David Goldrab.'

She put her head to one side and gave a small smile. 'Yeah,' she said. 'Right. I'll kill him and you steal all his champagne.'

Steve didn't laugh, just went on staring at her.

'What? You look weird, Steve. Don't scare me.'

'But I'm serious. That's what they offered me at the meeting yesterday. I sat in the Wolseley in Piccadilly drinking two-hundred-quid-a-bottle champagne and got offered thirty K to off David Goldrab. I told you it was going to be dark.'

They stared at each other, stony-faced with shock.

After a moment he shook his head. 'No forget it. I didn't say that.'

'Yes, you did.' She straightened, groped blindly for the sofa behind her. Sat down with a b.u.mp on the arm. 'It's not true is it?'

His eyes flickered across her face. 'Good G.o.d, Sally, what the h.e.l.l have I wandered into?' His shoulders slumped wearily. 'It's like being in a b.l.o.o.d.y Tarantino movie.'

'You're serious? You're really serious?'

'f.u.c.k, yes. Yes Yes.'

'Do people really do things like that? In real life?'

He shrugged, as mystified as she was. 'Apparently. I mean, Christ, I always kind of knew it happened from time to time to people in my job. You'd hear about it this and that bent PI giving some ex-IRA guy ten K to drive a Range Rover over someone's wife in their driveway. Just like I always knew the really s.h.i.+t stuff in life existed. The reality of all the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who walk the streets unchallenged. They're not stopped because they're dressed in Armani suits, drive high-end Audis and get called ”sir”, but they're psychos just the same, for their ruthlessness and for the scalps they take. I knew all that that lives were being destroyed under the veneer. I knew complete and utter bare-faced greed really existed. And on some level I knew things like this must happen. People must get killed for a price.' He leaned back in the chair, clutching his hand. 'I just never, ever ever, thought it would come near me.'

Sally let all her breath out. She gazed up at the ceiling, spent time fitting this into her head. After a while, when neither of them had moved, she said, 'Steve?'

'What?'

'Those people. Weren't they nervous when you said no?'