Breakdown (23 page)

Indeed I do, Cooper.

Michael gave him a hint of a smile. “You’re working on it, though, aren’t you?”

Chris stared at him without changing expression.

Michael stabbed a finger at Chris. “You need to take that wedding ring off your finger.”

Chris was sitting with his chin in his left hand. He pressed the smooth band of gold against his lip. “Maybe.”

“If you’ve got any chance with her, Price, you’re a fool to pass it up. Time to move on, mate; your wife’s dead, but you’re not.”

“That’s enough, Cooper.” Chris sat back in his chair, crossing his arms.

Michael put up his hands. “End of discussion. I suppose if I’d gone to the dance, I’d have the pick of any number of fun-filled beds for the night. But now she’s gone to the trouble of changing the sheets, I guess I’ll have to stay.”

Chris took a long drink.

“Don’t look at me like that, Price. I’m not so bad, and you know it. I have enough manners to keep my visits to a minimum and behave myself while I’m here. I’m sure you’ve had the whole story by now. This is my family, you know.”

* * *

Chris heard a quick knock on his door just before he put out his lamp. He opened it a crack. Michael stood there.

“Truce, okay? I have something for you.”

Chris stepped back and let him in.

“Look, I’ve been hearing some talk,” Michael went on, keeping his voice low. He closed the door. He had a small bundle in his hand. “There are trouble spots; not around here, closer to London, but you never know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gangs. Taking what they want, generally causing trouble. Here, take this.” He unrolled the bundle, a scrap of rag, exposing a small black handgun. He held it out. “You’ve been around, Price, I know. Hell, you spent time in London. You never wished you had one?”

Chris fought the rush of adrenaline. “I did have.” He took the gun. It fit into his hand in a comforting way, easier than the last one. “A SIG Sauer. Brilliant.” It was obscene: this brutal thing in this gentle house. He checked the clip for bullets.

Michael grinned. “You never cease to surprise me, Price.” He fished in his pocket, dropped a number of bullets into Chris’s hand.

Chris counted them. “That’s all?”

“Best I could do. Enough to get you out of a tight spot, maybe.”

“Thanks.”

“Come in handy on your trip to Bath, eh?”

Chris eyed him.

“You’re still planning that, aren’t you? You seemed bent on it, back in Portsmouth,” Michael said.

“Yeah, I suppose.”

“Or have you given it up in favor of greener pastures?”

“Not entirely.”

Michael gestured at the gun. “Right, well, I wouldn’t let on about that.”

“No,” Chris agreed.

“’Night, then.” Michael went out and closed the door.

Chris stared at the gun, then wrapped it up in the rag again and put it in the top dresser drawer. He lay in bed a long time before he went to sleep, thinking about London, the faded red
X
and
3D
scrawled on the door of his brother Kevin’s flat, the weeks of despair, the depths he’d fallen to, and the deadly end of it.

* * *

“Paulie,” Michael said as they were clearing the breakfast dishes, “come and take a walk with me.”

Pauline’s first inclination was to say no, but her mum smiled at her.

“Go on, dear,” Grace said. “I’ll finish up here.”

Michael held out his hand to her as he stood by the back door. She ignored it, instead getting a light jacket off a hook on the wall and putting it on as she went out the door ahead of him. George and Chris had already gone out, and Chris was just dragging open the big door on the barn. He looked over as they came out.

“We won’t be long,” she called to him. Michael looked sideways at her.

They walked around the house, through the garden, to the road, and strolled in the direction of Michael’s house. Pauline waited to see what Michael had to say.

“Things are looking good around here,” Michael started. “Your place is picking up. You’ve got more veggies this year, eh?”

“Yes, we planted a bit more.”

“Is that a new shed out back?”

“Yes, but we can’t find shingles for it. George doesn’t think he can afford to pay someone to make wooden shingles.”

“I’ll have a look around, see what I can come up with.”

“Don’t get in trouble over it,” Pauline said, but Michael waved it off.

“And you, you’re not having to work as hard?”

“What are you getting at, Michael?”

“Is Chris planning to stay, then?”

Pauline had to smile. As she suspected, Michael was jealous of Chris. She didn’t answer right away, just to see what else Michael would say.

“Is he the reason you slept with your mum last night?”

“No, Michael, you’re the reason I slept with Mum last night.”

“Paulie...” he said, shaking his head.

“Michael, we’ve already had this conversation, two years ago, the last time you turned up and wanted to pick up where we left off, like you always do. Two years, Michael. It’s been almost two years!”

“I’ve been busy—”

“You could have been dead, for all I knew. At least before, when you disappeared, I figured I’d hear about it if there was going to be a funeral.”

Michael rolled his eyes.

“But now,” Pauline went on, “I wouldn’t ever know. You’d just disappear forever, and I’d never know what happened. Just like Jim.”

“Paulie, you’re being dramatic,” Michael said, trying to take her hand.

“No, I’m being fed up, is what!” she said, pulling her hand away. “Just because it suits you fine doesn’t mean it suits me fine. I’m serious, Michael. We’re done. I’ll be your friend, I’ll always be your friend, but that’s it.” She turned around and started walking back toward the house.

“Paulie, wait,” Michael said, and she stopped. “I’m just worried about you.”

She screwed up her face at him and put her hands on her hips. “You have got to be kidding. You show up here after almost two years without so much as a letter, and you’re worried about me? Piss off, Michael!”

“I sent a letter,” he protested. “I sent one with Price.”

“Oh yes, thank you for that very informative scrap.”

“You don’t know this bloke, Paulie.”

She stood with her mouth open. It took her a moment to take in what he had said. “And you do? Are you actually trying to tell me that you know him better after two months than I do after nine? I think I’ve come to know him quite well, actually. No, shut up,” she said when he tried to interrupt. “You have no right, Michael, to say anything like that. You have no idea what’s going on here—which, by the way, is nothing!”

“I just mean that he’s got a lot of baggage.”

“Excuse me, but I’m the one with the degree, remember? You lasted how long at university? One term? Of course he has ‘baggage,’ as you so eloquently put it. He lost his wife and baby, quite horribly, and a whole lot of other people as well. He’s seen far more horrible things than you. He’s come a long way in the time he’s been here. Hell, you sent him here, remember?”

“He said he just needed to get well enough to go on to Bath.”

“Maybe he doesn’t think he’s well enough, yet. He can stay as long as he needs or wants.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She stared at him, trying to control her anger. It always ended like this with Michael. He always pushed it too far. As if he could dictate things to her. As if she had to run her life through him. Usually they could have a good week together before things fell apart. This time they hadn’t even had twenty-four hours.

“Don’t be mad, Paulie,” he said. “Look, you’ve seen him at his best. I’ve seen him at his worst.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I saw him nearly beat a man to death. I helped pull him off.”

An image of Chris taking down Rob Warren with lightning speed popped into Pauline’s head. She clenched her fists. “What are you talking about?”

Michael looked as serious as she’d ever seen him. “It was on the lorry docks. Some bloke shows up with a gun and grabs one of the gals—Kay—who was one of the supervisors. Puts the gun to her head, says he’s going to kill her, that he wants to see Chris Price. Chaos, of course, and no one knows where Price is, not that we’d let the guy shoot him, but you know what I mean. Well, along comes Price, out of nowhere—someone must have told him—walking right toward the guy. He aims the gun at Price, of course, and starts screaming at him, that it’s all his fault, that he’s going to shoot both Price and Kay.”

Michael stopped, took a deep breath, as if it really bothered him to remember this, to talk about it. “Price never stopped, just walked right up to him, grabbed the gun out of his hand and beat him with it. Dropped the poor bugger like a stone, and then just kept beating him until we pulled him off. Never said a word. Sat in the corner with blood on his hands until they decided not to charge him with anything. Everybody figures he saved Kay’s life, right? They carted the other bloke off to hospital. Don’t know what ever happened to him.”

Pauline stared at Michael. Her stomach twisted, sending a nasty taste up into her mouth. “Why did you tell me that?”

“I just thought you should know,” he said. “This guy knew him, Paulie, knew Chris, and hated him enough to want to kill him. It must have been something to do with the time he was in London. I just want you to be careful. I think you’ve fallen for him.”

Pauline kept her face calm, but her heart flip-flopped. Had Michael said that about her falling for Chris just to annoy her, because he was jealous, or had he seen something in the way she interacted with Chris? She had tried so hard to keep it strictly platonic, and now she wondered if she had failed.

“Why did you send him here in the first place, if you’re so worried about it?”

“I’m not so worried about it. I think he’s a good chap,” Michael said. “I really do. I like him. I owed him. He covered for me a couple of times when he didn’t have to. He needed a break. I don’t think he’s had many breaks in this whole bloody mess. And that had happened the first week he was there. Nobody really knew him yet. Everybody left him alone, of course, after that. And then he was—well, you know, quiet, no expression. I never saw him even raise his voice the rest of the time we were there. He talked in his sleep, though.”

“Yes, he did that here, too.”

“I wasn’t worried about him coming here. He said he was going to get over that cough and head to Bath. I figured that would be the end of it. When he did talk, that’s what he talked about, going to Bath, finding his family. I never dreamed he’d still be here.”

“He’s afraid to go to Bath,” Pauline said.

“You’ve worked your magic with him, have you, Doctor Anderson?”

“A bit, yes. He’s afraid they’ll all be dead. He’s not sure if he can stand that. And that’s the only reason he’s still here, Michael. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, Doctor,” Michael said quietly. “Once again, your patient has fallen for you. Maybe you should work a bit more magic, send him off to Bath to find out what’s what.”

Pauline’s heart flopped again, but she dismissed what Michael had said about Chris falling for her. “You just want him gone, Michael. You don’t care about him at all.”

“I care about
you
, Paulie. Every time I see you I wonder why the hell I stayed away so long.” He took a step closer, tried to look sincere.

“Oh, piss off, Michael,” Pauline said, pushing him away. She started walking again, back toward the house.

She didn’t let him get her alone again, didn’t let him try to talk to her. Later that afternoon he packed up his bag, said his brief good-byes, and drove off on his motorcycle. He promised to come back soon.

CHAPTER 20

“M
ichael told me something,” Pauline said as she used the hatchet to chip kindling. Chris was splitting logs a few meters away. He stopped, rested the ax on the ground, and wiped his sleeve across his forehead. He looked over at her and waited. “About when you were working on the lorry docks.”

His mouth became a hard line. He hefted the ax, took a swing, and split a log balanced on a stump. “He told you what happened with Kay and Marcus.”

Pauline nodded. “He didn’t know the man. He said the man knew you, though.”

“Yeah, I knew him,” Chris said, his voice hard. “He deserved it.”

“Michael said he pointed a gun at you and said he was going to shoot you, and you walked right up to him.”

“He’d have shot Kay if no one did anything. I took a chance.” Chris set another log on end on the stump.

“And you beat him unconscious.”

“He deserved it.”

“Michael said they had to pull you off, that you were going to kill him.”

“If I were going to kill him, I would have used the gun. I almost did. Maybe I should have.” He swung the ax hard. It stuck in the log, and he worked it loose. Pauline chipped away at her piece of wood.

Chris took a few more swings, grunting with each one. Then he threw the ax down.

“Is that what he took you off to tell you? I’m still here, so he decided he had to warn you about me? Something bad enough so you’d send me packing?”

“No, he just—”

“Michael doesn’t understand. I knew Marcus. I’d seen him do things, heard him bragging about other things—things that give decent people nightmares.” He stopped, staring at the ground. “I don’t know if I ever mentioned him. He was the leader of the gang in London. He killed people, Pauline, like you butcher chickens. You want to know what happened to Beryl? Marcus ordered her execution, because she was helping me, trying to get me out of there. We escaped, but while we were running, she was shot. My fault. That’s what those nightmares are about: Beryl dying—in pain—because of me.”

Chris glared at her, as if defying her to contradict him. Pauline didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t a detached therapist anymore. She wanted to go to him and hold him and soothe him. All this was a mistake. She should never have brought this up.

“Marcus followed me to Portsmouth. That’s the kind of person he was. He couldn’t bear that I got away, that he’d lost control of anything. He couldn’t just let me go. He had to kill me. But I’d seen him in a similar situation in London. I thought he might hesitate. I took the chance.