Bone and Cane (23 page)

If you were the candidate, time ought to pass more quickly. There were plenty of legitimate things to do, even if it was only saluting the volunteers as they went out to deliver the day-of-poll leaflet. But every ten minutes felt like an hour. Sarah travelled to and from each set of committee rooms, smiling all the time, trying to project an optimism she didn’t feel or expect party workers to share. She’d like to catch a nap but knew that she was too wound up to sleep. So she stopped at the main committee rooms for another mug of tea and prepared to rally the troops.

In a good committee room, time never hangs heavily. Nobody sticks around. The organiser gets workers in and out quickly and the candidate can be a hindrance. After a few minutes of bland conversation, Sarah went for a pee and came back to find an empty front room.

‘Sent out the first lot knocking up,’ Barry Griffiths, who was running the show, told her. He turned to a new arrival. ‘You’ve just missed ’em’, he said. ‘But if you hurry down the road . . .’

‘Sorry,’ said a familiar voice. ‘I have to go to work in a few minutes. I did all those leaflets you sent me out with. Thought I’d bring you back the spares.’

‘Good lad,’ Barry said. ‘Say hello to the candidate before you go. Sarah, this is . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’

‘Nick,’ Sarah said, smiling awkwardly. ‘I’ll walk you out.’

Once they were outside, she asked Nick. ‘Time for a quick drink?’

‘I can make time if you can.’

She took him to the pub round the corner, where Sarah was a familiar sight and nobody bothered her. Sarah sat at a table while Nick bought a tomato juice for her and a half of bitter for himself.

‘You didn’t need to come out today,’ she said.

‘I haven’t missed helping out in an election since I’ve been old enough to vote. I figured you needed more help than the other buggers.’

‘Thanks,’ Sarah sipped her drink. It was insipid without Worcester sauce, but she didn’t want to interrupt the conversation by asking for some. ‘I was expecting you to call.’

‘I meant to but . . . things on my mind.’

‘Did I hear you say you were going to work?’

‘Joe persuaded me to do one last day. The election’s got us busy.’

‘I hope you’ll come to the party tonight.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Nick said. ‘My membership’s been lapsed for five years and most people there would know why.’

‘Time to start rehabilitating yourself, maybe.’

He looked away and she reached out to him, squeezing his left wrist with her right hand. ‘Nick, this is me. Tell me what’s on your mind.’

‘This isn’t the place. I said I’d start a shift at six. I ought to ring for a cab.’

‘I’ll take you,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m a spare part today anyway.’

They left their drinks unfinished. Cane Cars was only five minutes’ drive at this time of day, so Sarah went as slowly as she could. ‘Please talk to me, Nick. There’s something wrong. What is it?’

‘I went to see Ed Clark yesterday.’

‘Oh.’ Whatever this was, she knew it would be bad. ‘And?’

‘Ed said you were lovers. Described the purple birth mark on your groin.’

Sarah shivered, then exhaled. ‘I didn’t tell you the whole thing. It was too . . . ’ She wanted to say
upsetting
but that wasn’t the right word. ‘Degrading.’

‘It’s your business, not mine.’

Behind her, somebody sounded their horn. Sarah was forced to drive on. ‘I’m just going to pull over for a minute.’

They were on the edge of some playing fields, half of which had been replaced with ugly, new Housing Association builds.

‘He ripped my knickers off, Nick. He had my dress up round my waist. The room was brightly lit, so he got a good look, yeah. Then I kneed him in the groin. How could you think that I’d give myself to a neanderthal like him?’

Although she’d stopped driving, Nick still stared ahead. ‘You knocked yourself out to get him out of prison.’

‘Because I thought he was innocent!’

Her mobile rang. Sarah snapped a ‘hello’, then recognised her party leader’s voice. Taken aback, she stumbled out an apology for her abruptness. Tony pooh-poohed this in his most earnest, blokey manner. He told her how much he appreciated the work Sarah had done over the last two years. ‘I admire you sticking with your seat. It was the right thing to do, but I know you were given . . . options. If things work out for us tonight and they don’t work out for you, I want you to know this: we’ll find you a role. A good one.’

She didn’t need to tell Nick who she’d been talking to. When the call ended, he sounded impressed.

‘Call you often, does he?’

Sarah shook her head. ‘First time ever. Do you believe me about Ed?’

She turned to face him and they looked each other straight in the eye, only a few inches apart. ‘How can I not believe you?’ he said.

This was not the moment to kiss him, though Sarah wanted to. But it was their most intimate moment since they stopped being lovers.

‘Suppose I’d better drive you back,’ she said.

Nick only spoke again when she was almost at the cab firm.

‘Something I haven’t told you. Something important.’

‘Wait a mo.’ She didn’t want to end the conversation but the road outside Cane Cars was double yellowed and busy. Sarah turned into the cab firm car park, where there was one space, which she took. At least they couldn’t be seen here. Words tumbled out of Nick.

‘The woman I was seeing until recently . . . it wasn’t serious, but you know her. I picked her up in the cab from one of your surgeries.’

Sarah could feel it coming, knew at once who her rival was.

‘It was entirely physical. You can’t imagine what it’s like, not having any for five years. Anyway, it was Polly. Polly Bolton.’

‘You were screwing
that
?’ Sarah shook her head in disbelief.

‘That’s not all of it. I went round to see her the other day. I wanted to warn her that Ed’s driving a taxi for my brother. Only, she already knew. Thing is, and this is hard to believe, she’s seeing Ed.’

‘Polly’s got back with Ed? That’s beyond bizarre.’

‘You knew that they were together before?’

‘I only just found out. How close are they, have you any idea?’

‘They’re living together, as far as I can tell. She’s a hard case, Polly. I told her what you’d told me about Ed. She didn’t give a shit. She says he didn’t do it. She says he told her who did.’

‘If he knew that,’ Sarah said, ‘he’d have told me. Or at the very least he’d have told his solicitor.’

‘I’d better go,’ Nick said, awkwardly leaning over and putting an arm around her. ‘Do you want me to ring you later?’

‘Please. I ought to be at the count by ten. Until then, whatever I do is displacement activity.’

He kissed her on the cheek, then got out of the car. Sarah began to back out of her space, distracted. What could a man like Nick see in a woman like Polly? Had prison coarsened Nick so much? No wonder he’d believed it when he heard that Sarah had been with Ed Clark.

A cab was waiting in the narrow driveway. Sarah held up her hand to indicate that she was on her way out and pulled down the sun visor to keep off the glare. The cab pulled alongside Sarah and she manoeuvred carefully around it to make her way out, not once looking at the driver.

‘What was Sarah Bone doing in the car park?’ Ed Clark asked.

‘No idea,’ Nas said, as Nick put down the paper, which was predicting a comfortable Labour win.

‘Thought you’d stopped working here, duck,’ Ed said to Nick.

‘I’m not working,’ Nick said, and Nas didn’t contradict him.

‘You and Sarah. Back together again, are you?’

‘She gave me a lift, that’s all.’

‘I’d have thought she had better things to do on a day like today,’ Ed said. ‘But she has strong needs, Sarah, dun’t she?’

Nick couldn’t stop himself. He hit Ed in the face, hard, sideswiping his nose. The other driver didn’t go down. Without waiting to recover, he lunged at Nick. Before Ed had time to get in a good punch, Nick kneed him in the groin, hard.

‘From what I hear,’ he said, as Ed keeled over, ‘you’re used to being hit there.’

Nas threw Nick the keys to Stuart’s cab. ‘Get out of here before he can stand up.’

29

B
est to be straight with her. Sarah couldn’t pretend to be at Polly’s house by accident. Suppose Ed was there? His taxi wasn’t outside but maybe, like Nick, he shared one. Meeting Ed was a risk she would have to take. Sarah knocked on the door, then took deep breaths, inflating the anger she needed before she was able to tackle Polly.

‘You again.’

‘We need to talk. Now. Away from the kids.’

Sarah’s demeanour was stern enough for Polly to step aside and let her in. She yelled into the front room.

‘I’ve got a visitor, so watch the telly quietly. No interruptions.’

She ushered Sarah into the back room, which was messier than on Sarah’s last visit. There was a leather jacket hanging from the cellar door. It was the one Ed had been wearing on the night of his release. Sarah pointed at it.

‘How could you, Polly? You were so convinced he killed your brother, your sister-in-law.’

‘Nick told you, did he? Ed said you used to know him but I found that hard to credit. The MP and the jailbird. We’re not so different, are we? Both go for blokes who’ve been inside.’

‘Nick’s crime was a lot less serious than Ed’s.’

‘Except for one thing,’ Polly said, looking at the stairway. ‘Ed didn’t do it.’

‘You’ve changed your tune. I don’t get it, Polly. How could you let that . . .’ – she was going to say ‘sociopath’ but doubted Polly would know what the word meant – ‘that creep near enough to you to convince you he’s innocent, never mind let him into your bed?’

‘Ed gets what he wants,’ Polly sneered. ‘But then, you’d know that, wouldn’t you?’

‘If you’re saying . . . ’

‘It bothers you, dunnit, that I’ve had the same men you’ve had. Nick, he’s the one who likes it rough. Did he learn to be like that from you? Ed, he’s a gent compared to Nick. Don’t look at me that way. You’re not going to pretend Ed forced you, are you? I know what you told Nick. But I know what you’re like.’

‘You know nothing,’ Sarah said. ‘Ed Clark tried to attack me and if I hadn’t hurt him, he would have raped me. I went out with Nick fourteen years ago and how he could have stooped to sleep with the likes of you, I can’t fathom.’

‘
Stoop
?
Sleep
?
Fathom
? Listen to her. Your Nick never slept here. He came to fuck me when he felt like it and didn’t give a shit if the kids heard a thing or not. Ed sleeps here. He’s good to those kids. And if he offered you a jump and you turned him down, you missed out.’

‘I think Ed murdered your brother,’ Sarah said.

‘You’re wrong.’

‘How can you be so sure, so suddenly?’

‘I am sure. I know who done it.’

‘Who?’

‘Think I’d tell you, way you’ve treated me?’

‘I treated you with nothing but respect. And I helped get Ed out of prison. You’ve suddenly decided I did the right thing, but I’m not so sure any more.’

‘The evidence against Ed was rubbish. He only got put away because they needed someone for killing a cop. He’d have got out without you.’

‘Convince me,’ Sarah pleaded. ‘Tell me what Ed told you. Who killed Terry and Liv Shanks? Why did they do it?’

The front door opened and closed. Ed charged into the room. His nose was red and there was blood on his shirt.

‘Get out,’ Polly told Sarah. ‘Ed, what happened?’

Sarah stood with her back to the door. Ed glared at her.

‘Who attacked you, Ed?’ Sarah asked, allowing no sympathy in her voice.

‘You know who did.’

‘Nick hit you?’

‘Then ran off, ’sright. But I’ll catch up with him, don’t you worry.’

Sarah felt a warm buzz of affection for Nick.

‘Look how smug she is,’ Polly said, as Ed took off his shirt.

‘How did you do it, Ed?’ Sarah asked. ‘How did you convince Polly you didn’t attack me? The same way you made her believe you didn’t kill her brother?’

‘She dun’t need convincing of ought. Poll knows what happened to Terry, and to Liv. And she knows what’s going to happen to you.’ Ed lowered his voice and reached over Sarah. His sweaty chest crushed her breasts, while his right hand jammed the door closed. ‘There were no witnesses, were there? There’s only me and you know how hard I fucked you, how you told me it were the best shag you’d had your whole life. But this afternoon, Poll’s a witness. What do you say, Poll? A’right wi’ you if I give her seconds?’

Sarah couldn’t tell if Ed was serious. She reached for her phone. It wasn’t in her pocket. She’d left it in the car. She looked over Ed’s shoulder for help, assurance that they were winding her up. Polly’s face was a blank, unreadable.

‘Let’s finish what we started,’ Ed said.

It was Nick’s last shift and one of his first jobs was to pick up his brother.

‘How is she?’

‘Don’t reckon it’ll be long now,’ Joe said. ‘Thanks for agreeing to do a shift.’

‘You’re not going to the Labour bash?’

‘I’ll be there late on, I expect. Nas has to get home sometime.’

‘Nas’s brothers,’ Nick said. ‘Do they know about you?’

‘You must be joking.’

‘You lead a risky life,’ Nick said.

‘There’s no fun without risk,’ Joe said. ‘You told me that once, when I warned you about the skunk operation.’

‘I don’t remember it being all that much fun. Profitable, yes, but half of it went up my nose. It was certainly a risk.’

‘You were bound to get caught sometime.’

‘Most people don’t,’ Nick said. ‘I was unlucky.’

‘You make your own luck. If I’d come in with you, like you wanted, I wouldn’t have any of . . . this.’

‘No need to rub it in,’ Nick said. His brother had never been good at tact. It was one reason he always got what he wanted. Joe changed the subject.

‘Someone said they saw that Andrew Saint in town the other day. You still in touch with him?’

‘Not really.’

‘I tried to call him, like you asked me to, when you got busted. He never returned my calls.’