Crime Always Pays (13 page)

          Mel considered. 'You're not worried he'd freak?'

          'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.' Which would be, Sleeps was guessing, roughly three seconds after the bridge flew out of his ass, a Mack truck dangling from its railing. 'But I warn you now, you do it and you'll have all the bam you can handle. You'll be up to your tits, pardon my French, in bam.'

          'Y'think?'

          'A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-whop-boom-
bam
,' Sleeps said.

Ray

'So that's Trieste we didn't get to see,' Karen said. 'And now you're saying we won't see Corfu either.'

Up on deck smoking, leaning on the rail, Ray guessed the occasional glow here and there was Albania, its huge dark bulk rearing up into the Balkans, stars glittering if he craned his neck all the way back.  

'Right now,' he said, 'the priority is to make the cruise. Then, we know for sure no one's getting screwed, specifically Terry, we can go anywhere we want. Maybe even come back and see Corfu.'

          Karen took a drag on her smoke. 'You still think they won't make it?'

          'Depends on if Madge mentions booking it by credit card. If she does, Terry's not taking that chance. But there's no guarantees she'll mention it. I mean, when's it likely to come up in conversation?'

          'It might.'

          'If it does, great. Everyone's a winner.'

          'You don't think it will.'

          'I don't 
know
, Karen. How would I know?'

          'Okay, relax. I'm only asking.'

          'About fifty times an hour.'

          'You're the one said we shouldn't presume anything.'

          'Yeah, well, she will or she won't. Either way, we're seeing that ferry off.'

          'And then making our getaway.'

          'That's the basic idea.'

          'Except you already said, there's no getaway as such. We're getting away. All the time worried about Doyle sharking you.'

          'You're the one's worried about Doyle.'

          'Right now,' Karen said, 'I'm actually more worried that you're not.'

          'Doyle didn't strike me as the kind to hold a grudge. I mean, she was fucked off, okay. But she's a cop. She'll be practical.'

          'This is how well you know her. You can predict how she's going to react, and for how long.' 

          'Doyle's the same as anyone else. She has her limits.'

          'And you know what they are.'

          'I can make an educated guess.'

          'I'm all ears.'

          'I'm thinking the Caribbean might be a jump too far for her.'

          'The Caribbean?'

          Ray jerked at thumb in the general direction of Albania. 'I served in there,' he said. 'Way the hell back and gone in there. When I was with the Rangers, a peace-keeping mission in Kosovo. Six-month tour. Anyway,' he said, 'this guy I served with, he's out now, running an op in the Caribbean based out of Haiti. Has the security franchise for a mobile phone company, they're expanding into the Caribbean, Central America. Said he could always use a guy could handle himself.'

          'You're thinking,' Karen said, 'about going to the Caribbean.'

          'I'm saying it's an option. One that's probably beyond Doyle's limits, even if she ever found out where I was.'

          'And where's that leave me?'

          'The issue,' Ray said, 'far as I understand it, is me and Doyle. You being worried about how I'm not worried about her.'

          'While you're still with me and Anna, sure.'

          'This is what I'm getting at,' Ray said. 'If I'm gone you don't have to worry about Doyle no more. Or about me not worrying about Doyle.' He sparked another Lucky, no Marlboro Lights on the ferry. 'Or am I missing something here?'

          'Like what?'

          'Like I don't know. Maybe something about Doyle and me, you haven't gotten around to saying it yet.'

          'I just said it.'

          'Not this horseshit,' Ray said, 'some outside shot about Doyle maybe prowling me.'

          Karen, eyes hidden away behind mirrored shades at four in the morning, the electric-blue hair glowing weirdly in the moonlight, said, 'You ever listen to jazz, Ray?'

          'Not by choice.'

          'What they say about jazz is, if it has to be explained you'll never get it.'

          Ray sucked on the Lucky. 'So now it's jazz. It's jazz, it's Doyle, it's Madge. It's Anna.' He exhaled hard. 'You see it?'

          'See what?'

          'It's never 
you
, Karen.'

          'It's never me how?'

          Ray flipped the Lucky, two in a row too harsh after the Marlboro Lights. He said, tasting the tar, 'We get into Patra? There's a train overland to Athens.'

          'You told me this already.'

'The train'll get you into Piraeus, the port, or damn near.'

          'We've been over --'

          'Then, the ferries take you out to the islands.'

          Karen folded her arms. 'Your point being?'

          'To get this far, to Greece, you needed a driver. Except now you don't need a driver.'

          'You're bailing?'

          'Now I've got you here, I'm a liability.'

          'I'm asking,' Karen said, 'if you're bailing out.'

          'Let's say it's more in the way of letting myself be pushed.'

          'Don't try and fake me, Ray. I don't fake.'

          'It's another six, seven hours,' Ray said, 'to Patra. Gives you plenty of time to think it over. Then, you want to find me, I'll be easy found.'

          Karen getting the twist in her jaw again. 'You want to be found,' she said, 'you better be lying out somewhere so's I trip over your legs.'

          Ray dug in his pocket, came up with the van's keys and laid them on top of the ferry's rail. 'Your call,' he said.

Madge

Madge, suffering night-sweats and hot flushes, pacing the room with dawn in the post, couldn't decide if she was finally coming menopausal or just suffering guilty killer syndrome. Although guilty, she was adamant, only in the technical sense. Like, legally. Once the shock began to ebb away, the dullness sharpening again into a stark appraisal of what she'd done – blew a hole in Frank, she'd overheard Ray telling Terry, you could've bowled a strike through – Madge was delighted to realise she was getting bolshy again, unrepentant.

          The way she saw it, slipping out onto the balcony overlooking the quiet piazza, smoking one of Terry's cigarettes, it all came down to consequences. Madge, sure, had often fantasised about what it would've been like to have Frank at the business end of a gun. Or, maybe, tucked into an iron maiden. Except the likelihood of that ever coming to be had always been size zero slim, a thing you read about in magazines but only ever happened to the lucky few, the insanely dedicated. Then Frank starts the ball rolling, arranges his wife of twenty years to be snatched, puts her in a place where a guy's handing her a gun, Frank helpless in handcuffs …

          Like, what else was a reasonable woman to do?

          No, the way Madge was seeing it, if anyone was guilty for Frank being dead, it was Frank. No, not guilty – responsible. Madge tapped ash off the balcony, wondering what the difference was, legally speaking, between guilty and responsible. Not really caring, though. Everything feeling a bit conceptual right now, theoretical. It was like, she thought, being caught in a bubble looking out at the world carrying on as normal, Madge watching it turn, interested but not particularly engaged, like drinking a coffee on some terrace, curious as to what people were wearing, why they were wearing it, how in Christ's name they thought they could get away with knee-high boots and three-quarter-length jeans with fat turn-ups over calf-muscles they'd swiped off a baby hippo. The Italians, Christ, all fashion, no style …

Madge feeling immune, dislocated. But in a good way. Knowing the long arm of the law could come reaching out across the horizon any minute, knock on the bubble's door, crook a finger – except, if it did? 

Then it did. Deal with it then. 

          Madge'd lived most of her life worried. Always thinking ahead, making plans, contingencies for what might go wrong. Knowing, married to Frank, that it was only ever a matter of time before something else cropped up. Finally he got himself barred for malpractice, sued for negligence. One woman, Madge had seen the pictures Frank'd left out on the desk in his study, Frank curled up on the couch cuddling a quart of Glenfiddich, the woman looking a lot like the ice after the Stanley Cup went into overtime …

          Then, the twins. Jeanie and Liz, watching 
The Simple Life
, Paris and Nicole, like it was Open University. Madge had done her best by them, at least in the early years, before the twins got sucked into the race to become the skinniest twit on YouTube and Madge turned to nurturing her preferred deadly duo, the old Prozac-and-vodka one-two.

But really, what did she owe them?

Wrong question, Madge told herself, flipping the cigarette out into the piazza, slipping back into the room, luxuriating in the sensation of the heavy velvet curtains sliding across her arms and shoulders. Round about now was when the twins, old enough to jaunt around the world, needed to realise how much they owed the woman who'd been ripped open giving birth. Madge hoping they'd do the math and come up owing her nothing. No demands, no more whinging, an absolute moratorium on constant, low-level grief about clothes, hair, boys, money. Mainly money.

Madge, okay, was the one responsible – no, guilty – for bringing them into the world. So sure, she'd done the crime. But she'd done her time too. And the least she was entitled to, the very least, was to walk away free and clear, debt to society paid.

Terry, she thought, looking down at him now where he lay humped over in the bed, wanted to take a cruise, live the high life, then take her home, he said, to face the music. Madge imagining a whole orchestra lined up in a row, a firing squad.

She shrugged. Maybe because Frank had been such a nut for Rossini, was always playing opera like it made him some kind of half-assed intellectual, Madge had never been a big fan of orchestras, all that classical horseshit. Terry, on the other --

          The thought arrowed into her mind so fast, so clear, that Madge gasped. And then its enormity struck her, the thunder arriving in the lightning's wake. Afterwards, huddled on the toilet, still shivering, she wondered if the reason hadn't seen it was because it was so big, so obvious …

How Terry'd had it arranged. Frank, the fool, bringing the heat down on everyone, Karen and Ray first, but Terry too, Terry the guy behind Madge getting snatched, the one who'd brought it all to Ray.

          She wondered too if Terry'd had Frank killed because he was a loose end or just to make an example of him, this is what happens when you fuck with Terry Swipes.

          Not that it mattered now. What mattered now was, Terry wasn't Madge's alibi.

Madge was Terry's.

Melody

'What is he?' Mel said. 'A cop?'

          'Dunno,' Sleeps said.

          'A soldier?'

          'Could be.'

          'That's some weird marching he's got going on there.'

          'I'm guessing he's drunk.'

          'Oh.' Mel leaned forward to peer into the wing mirror. 'Think he fell asleep?'

          'If he did, he's sleepwalking this way.'

          'Rossi, I mean.'

          'Sssh. Let me do the talking, okay?'

          The cop, or maybe soldier, the guy wearing dusty fatigues, weaved across the tarmac towards them, one hand upraised as if telling them to stop. Except they'd been stopped twenty minutes now, Rossi coming awake fast with a look of fright on his face, bawling at Sleeps to pull 
over
, he was touching cloth, the turtle showing its head.

So Sleeps pulled in onto the apron of a little supermarket, the place still closed this early, the sky lightening to a dull maroon over the crest of the hills rising sheer on their left. It was, Mel had decided, the most idyllic setting she'd ever seen for a supermarket, tucked neatly into the crook'd elbow of a bay that opened up on the other side of the road, rowboats moored and bobbing gently on the metallic glimmerings of the Adriatic half-glimpsed between the pines. Even the sight of Rossi shambling across the tarmac into the scrub beyond the tarmac apron, one hand jammed between his buttocks, hadn't spoiled the view entirely.