Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

If Elsa was downstairs that meant the children had gone to bed, and he found himself wishing keenly that bath time and stories had taken a little longer than usual so that he could properly wish them goodnight. He badly wanted to see them. With luck, he could slip into bed beside Nancy and read her one last story. But even as his key turned in the lock he could hear cooking noises coming from the kitchen and knew that he was too late. Putting his bag down in the hall he gave a matter-of-fact “hello” to the house, conscious that this was what normal people do when they get home from work and, threading his way past the bicycles and over the children’s shoes, he joined Elsa, who was drying her hands on a tea towel and looking at him like a mother whose son has been in a fight.

“Come here,” she said, setting the towel aside and drawing him into a close hug. Holding him around the waist she leaned back, looked at him and smiled. “You don’t look too bad.”

He snorted. “It was a bit like a day in the office. One big long meeting.” But he knew she was being kind. Tiredness sat across his shoulders and he could sense the bags under his eyes.

“Do you want a drink?”

“God, yes.”

She took a bottle of whisky from one cupboard and two tumblers from another and poured an inch into each.

“Water?”

He shook his head, took a glass and leaning back against the kitchen counter raised it to her and drank. Neither said anything for a moment.

“So you’re free,” said Elsa, a hesitant question in her voice.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t come.” He tried a smile. “It was nothing in the end.”

She took a drink. “It wasn’t nothing earlier.”

“No. I’m sorry. They were putting the wind up me.”

She raised her eyebrows and looked at him.

“Some Italian policemen enjoy it,” he said.

“Just a game?”

“Something like that.”

She pushed her lips out and nodded. “What did they want from you?”

“I don’t know.” With his free hand he rubbed his brow from temple to temple. “They were fucking about. I got caught up in their latest project. You’d have to be an Italian to understand the rules.”

A pause.

“Why drag it all up again?” Her eyes were guarded, screening off some pressing anxiety. GIC had sacked Webster three months before he and Elsa had been due to marry, and that unforeseen reverse, he knew, had played on her mind ever since as something that might one day be repeated; but despite this he felt a flash of resentment that his problems couldn’t simply be his own.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Really. Because they can, I suppose.”

Elsa turned away and checked a pan on the stove, stirring its contents before replacing the lid.

“Can I do anything?” he said, watching her turn down the heat. She shook her head. “I might look in on the children.”

“Don’t, Ben.” She turned to look at him. “They’re asleep.”

“I’m just going to look around the door.”

“You’ll wake them.”

“I won’t.” He put down his drink and walked toward the kitchen door.

“Ben. Leave them. Please. It took an age to settle them. I know you’ve had a bad day but so have I. They’re not a comfort blanket. They need their sleep.”

He stopped short of the door, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

“They’ll be there in the morning,” she said softly. “In the meantime you can tell me how worried I should be by all this. Because I just don’t know.”

He turned, relenting. He knew that she was right, and scared, but he couldn’t answer her question. Perhaps it had all ended when he left the police station; perhaps it hadn’t even begun. If it hadn’t been for Senechal’s parting threat—because that was surely what it was—he would have expected nothing more than to keep quiet for a few months and avoid traveling to Italy, but now? Now he simply couldn’t say. He hadn’t had time to think it through.

“As far as I know, it’s fine. Really. Stupid charges, no evidence. They don’t have anything.”

“How good is your lawyer?”

“Good, apparently.” The first real lie.

“And he thinks you’ll be all right?”

“He thinks it’ll just go away. If it doesn’t, the Italians will have to extradite me, and their case is feeble. It won’t happen.” He paused, waiting for her to respond, then tried a smile. “We may have to holiday somewhere else for a while.”

But Elsa wasn’t ready for the mood to lighten. She continued to frown, her eyes lit with that light he knew so well.

“What did you do out there?” she said at last.

“I went to see Qazai.”

She shook her head. “No. Back then. What did you do?”

“Are you asking me if I’m guilty?”

She didn’t reply.

“Jesus. This isn’t about what I did.” He had a sudden, childish urge to smoke. And to get out.

Elsa watched him for a moment, unmoved. “That’s good. That’s all I wanted to know.”

He shook his head. “Do you know what? Forget it. I’ve been interrogated enough for one day.”

“Where are you going?” she said after him, as he left the kitchen and started wheeling his bicycle toward the door.

“Just out.” But he knew. He was going to see Ike. “Why you can’t just trust me I don’t know.” He looked over his shoulder at her, a righteous, fraudulent challenge.

“I want to. But if you were telling me everything you wouldn’t be running away.” Elsa’s arms were crossed and her eyes steadily on his. When he couldn’t look at them anymore, he left.

ABOUT HALF A MILEfrom his house Webster stopped pedaling, pulled over and reached down awkwardly to tuck the flapping trouser leg of his suit into his sock. The rain, which had been light, was now full and steady and as he bent over he could feel his thighs and shoulders cold with wet.

He should turn around, of course, apologize to Elsa, tell her everything—or more, at least. But he knew what her advice would be, saw its sense and had no intention of taking it, because it clashed with the plan lurking in his thoughts. So he cycled on, furious with himself, past Queen’s Park, slowly climbing across the Finchley Road and then the last, sheer push straight up into Hampstead, the houses growing older and richer beside him all the while. It was cooler now. Water dripped from his forehead and his calves burned with the work. Through the clouds and the plane trees overhead the last light barely found its way, and in his dark suit, made darker by the rain, with no lights on his bike, he felt pleasantly invisible after a day of scrutiny. He didn’t like attention, never had. The cold air and the exercise began gradually to sort his thoughts.

Hammer’s house was over by the heath on the prow of Hampstead where it fell away down to Kentish Town and the city beyond. He had lived in it for twenty years and under his ownership it had taken on something of its original eighteenth-century air: he had reinstated its oak paneling throughout, kept his one television out of the way in an upstairs room and favored low light and log fires, so that on a night like this the only way of telling whether he was inside was by looking for a faint glow around the edges of the shutters. But for his housekeeper, who occupied the attic floor, Hammer lived alone.

He was at home tonight and that, Webster had the sense to realize, was a relief. Ike had a way of making the complicated and unpleasant seem manageable, and there was no one better to see when you were feeling disordered. I’ve fled from one therapist into the arms of another, Webster thought as he chained his bike to the railings, because I didn’t like what the first was going to say.