Barely twelve miles away, Karl was indeed trying to get on with his life, but he was not sleeping with Liz Grafton. He hadn’t seen her since that night. He had asked about her, of course, and knew she was up north somewhere, staying with an old school friend that not even the police had a name for. Still fearing for her life, maybe, or just eager for new surroundings to ease the pain. Karl, though, had stopped worrying about his old enemies. The police had watched his house for the first two days, but since then he’d been a sitting duck. And there had been no attack. Two days ago he’d finally stopped watching the street through a gap in the curtains. McDevitt was gone. He was hiding somewhere in Germany. He was no longer a threat.
New surroundings were something that Katie wanted. They had talked about a long holiday, but didn’t have the money just yet. So, they watched TV – never the news – and chatted – never about THAT – and shopped, and cleaned, and tried to return their lives to normal, to reinject the boring, repetitive aspects of life, in order to move on. They were aware that each minute that passed would make acceptance easier. There would be problems, though. Karl couldn’t face reopening the shop because a man had died there, and there was tension between he and his business partner because of it. As if it had been Karl’s fault. Katie’s dad’s house was going on the market because Katie couldn’t bear to return to it after her ordeal, and Peter was doing a bad job of hiding the fact that he also held Karl at fault. Then there were the headaches. Like a muscle overtrained that aches the next day, his mind had been so seriously assaulted that his head now throbbed constantly. But he got through it by thinking of the muscle analogy: it would heal bigger and stronger.
Katie was in the bath and Karl was in the living room when the phone rang.
‘You never did tell me your baby’s name.’
It was Liz. He hadn’t expected to hear from her again.
‘We’re going for Alex. We don’t know if it’s a boy or girl. But that fits both. Alexandra or Alexander.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said.
For a short time they chatted about things inconsequential. Her husband wasn’t mentioned, but she did tell him that she was selling ‘the businesses’ and going back to college to study veterinary medicine, which she had pursued many years ago but given up in order to run two of Grafton’s ‘enterprises’. Mick McDevitt wasn’t mentioned, but she did fleetingly say she was going to be donating serious amounts to charity because ‘auditors are sticking their noses in’. She hinted that Britain wouldn’t be home for long because there were ‘people wanting to muscle in’. He felt bad for her, but couldn’t find enough solace to want to continue the conversation. It brought back too many bad memories. And there were niggling doubts that she’d been as innocent as he’d assumed – certainly some newspapers didn’t believe Elizabeth Grafton had been nothing but a doting wife love-blind to her husband’s crimes. So, there were silences on his end.
She tapered off mid-sentence and said: ‘Ronald’s funeral is on Saturday. I’d like you to come.’
He paused long enough for her to understand.
‘I don’t know what good it would do, either,’ Liz said. ‘But having you there is what my brain’s saying is the right thing. Or at least offering you the chance to attend. Up to you.’
He was pretty certain it would turn out to be a bad idea. Maybe the press would be there and would wonder who he was. They might enquire, then poke, then unravel, and before he knew it they’d have the truth, so brilliantly hidden by the police so far. But his brain was telling him he couldn’t say no. Liz wanted him to go, so he would go. He couldn’t explain why, but he felt he owed her that. It would be a tricky situation because funerals were a time of grief and he felt nothing but abhorrence for Ronald Grafton. But that wasn’t what worried him as he ended the call.
The trickiest part of all would be breaking the news to Katie.
Ninety-Five
Brad
Since the target car-shared to and from work and wasn’t a social animal, getting to him alone would prove a problem. Luckily, the target had a doctor’s appointment at noon the next day.
He saw the car turn into the car park at 11.40 a.m. and find a space near the back where a low wall separated the grounds from those of a Co-op. It backed in, and stopped. He hopped over the wall, yanked open the passenger door and slipped neatly inside, grabbing the back of the driver’s head.
Ian broke the kiss after just a second.
‘Where the hell have you been, Brad?’
Brad sank low in the seat, watching the road. He’d seen the police watching the house and figured they might have followed Ian. But there was no sign.
‘Don’t believe what the papers have been saying. Not all of it is true.’
‘I know what journalists are like, Brad. And I thought I knew you. Just tell me, is someone dead because of something you did?’
Brad didn’t answer and didn’t look away from the road. But this time it was because of shame. And his silence gave Ian all the answers he needed.
‘I cannot be with a man in prison.’
‘They won’t catch me.’
‘Then I cannot be with a man running from the police.’
‘It would be like the early days. Secret meetings.’
‘Now is not a time for jokes.’
‘You don’t know the full story.’
‘Maybe you can beat this. But I can’t be with a man who lied to me.’
They both watched the road for a few seconds. ‘So what happens now?’
Ian said nothing. Brad looked across and saw a mobile in Ian’s hands. Using it would end things for ever, he understood.
‘Where will you go?’ Ian asked.
‘You mean where after I leave here?’
Ian didn’t answer that. ‘I’m supposed to call the police if I hear from you.’
‘And is that what you’re going to do?’
No answer. But the phone was still in his hands. Brad opened his door and got out. He shut it, but stood there, waiting. After five seconds, nothing happened, so he turned to leave.
The window came down. He stopped, and bent, and they looked at each other.
‘You understand my decision, don’t you, Brad? There were promises. Jobless and destitute, I don’t care. I said that, didn’t I? I wanted a good man. I said if you ever went back to that way of life, it was over. Remember?’ Ian rolled up his left sleeve to expose a tattoo along the inner forearm.
‘I remember. I know I can’t win you back. I accept that. But it’s not too late for this to still mean something.’
Brad exposed his own inner left forearm, and the same Latin phrase, Proverb 22:1. His return promise.
‘Melius est nomen bonum quam divitae multae.’
A good name is more desirable than great riches.
Ninety-Six
Karl
Karl had seen gangster funerals in films and read about real-life ones in the papers, and this one was nothing like he had expected. Six sleek black limousines followed the hearse which had so many floral tributes hanging off it that it looked like a rolling garden, but the turnout was mediocre. No throngs lined the streets bearing placards with the dead man’s face, no shops were shut in tribute, no planes flew overhead with banners. It looked like any other funeral. He put it down to the fact that Ronald Grafton had never achieved high infamy. Many knew his name, but there were many criminals out there and few carved a place in history the way the Kray twins had. He saw no police, either, unless they were undercover.
He had asked Katie if she’d wanted to attend, and she had: for two whole days, right up to the point where they pulled up outside the church.
‘I don’t want to do this,’ she said, which he’d been expecting. He was ready to turn the car around and leave, but she pointed at a greasy spoon across the road and said she would wait there. He said they could forget the funeral. She said he should do this for Liz. He said okay. He kissed her cheek, and stroked her belly, and off she scuttled. He turned his focus to the church.
* * *