Killing Cupid (31 page)

‘Especially in my country,’ I said.

He nodded sadly. Then they said they would be in touch if they needed to ask me any more questions, and left. Emily walked out of the room and returned a few minutes later. ‘There’s a taxi on the way. And when we get back to the hotel, we need to talk.’

Great, I thought. Just great.

I lay down on one bed and Emily sat on the other. She leaned forward and said very quietly, ‘Why did you lie to the police?’

‘What? I didn’t.’

‘You did, Alex. You told them those men didn’t say anything, but they did. I’m sure they did.’

‘Well… I said, dragging out the first word to give myself another nanosecond to think. ‘They said something in Dutch but I didn’t understand it.’

‘Alex, they said your name!’

‘No they didn’t.’

That made her pause, her brow furrowing with self-doubt. ‘I’m sure… I’m sure I heard them say your name just as we were going into the hotel. I had my back to you – but I heard someone say Alex.’

I opened my mouth to lie, then paused, hating myself. But what else could I do? One of the men had said my name – that’s why I turned around – and there was only one explanation: Siobhan must be in Amsterdam; I really had seen her through the pub window. And somehow she had found out where we were staying and had sent some thugs after me. I wondered if she had been watching while they beat me up, smiling to herself, discovering that revenge is indeed sweet. Not that I ever hurt Siobhan. Scared her, maybe. Inconvenienced her. But surely I hadn’t done anything to merit this – to merit her following us to another country, for God’s sake, and setting a pair of gorillas on me. What was wrong with her? While I was lying in the hospital bed I had realised how stupid it had been to run here. I should have gone to see Siobhan as soon as I’d suspected that she was responsible for the magazines and dead rat. And I should also have found a way of dealing with Kathy’s friend. I had made another mistake.

It was time I stopped running away from my problems.

Except I still didn’t want Emily to know about Siobhan. It would ruin everything; I would lose the only woman who didn’t hate me; the only woman in this fucked-up scenario who wasn’t capable of sending me to prison or hospital. Emily was the only one who cared for me. And another thing – hiding the truth from her had almost become a reflex. So I opened my mouth and told another big fat porky.

‘I honestly didn’t hear anyone say my name, Emily. And I would have heard it – you always hear when people say your name, don’t you? I think you must be mistaken.’

She was quiet for a moment. ‘But I’m sure one of them said something to you just before they ran off.’

‘He said something in Dutch.’

She looked at me for a long moment. And then she started to cry, not making any noise, just sitting there, still staring at me, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Then her lower lip started to wobble and she covered her face with her hands.

I sat up, feeling sick with guilt, hating myself more than ever. ‘Emily…’

She lay down and turned away from me, facing the wall. She said, ‘I need to sleep.’ I crossed over to her bed and put my hand on her shoulder but she was as still as a rock, her muscles tense. It was hard to believe that only a few hours ago she had been the dancing queen of Amsterdam, surrounded by men, her face alight with happiness. I said her name again and she said, ‘Let me sleep.’

I was relieved. I wasn’t going to have to talk about it any more.

The next morning, as soon as I woke up, I took a bath. My chest and stomach muscles felt like I’d lost a fight with a gorilla – rather, two huge Dutch gorillas, doing their best to send Amsterdam’s peace and love image up in a cloud of smoke. My cheekbone was badly grazed where it had scraped the pavement, and I held a flannel against it. My head pulsated and hummed; it hurt inside and out.

After a few minutes, I heard Emily get out of bed. She came into the room and said, ‘I want to go home.’

‘Okay.’ I wasn’t going to argue, knowing what the guy had really said to me as I lay in the road:
This is only a taster
. It sounded like a ‘this town ain’t big enough for the both of us’ -style threat. Stay one more night and I might end up saying hello to whatever lived at the bottom of this city’s canals.

Emily left the room and I slid deeper into the water. I felt a surge of anger towards Siobhan. The stupid bitch; she was a maniac; what the hell did I ever see in her? And, in answer to my question, I remembered her face, and her body, that body that was so much slimmer and more toned than Emily’s. I remembered her smell, and the sound she made as she splashed about in the bath.

I rubbed the towel against my bruises, reminding myself what Siobhan had done, sparking anger. I held on to it. Siobhan equals pain – my pain and Emily’s. I had to stop being stupid; I had to stop thinking about Siobhan and comparing her to Emily. Siobhan was slim – so what? I like Emily’s curves. Siobhan is strong and determined and creative and Emily is…

Shut it, Alex, I shouted inside my head, pressing the towel against my bruises again. I loved Emily, not Siobhan. Siobhan was a menace. A threat. And if she did one more thing – then I’d give her a real reason to be scared of me.

After dressing, I went downstairs with Emily and told the receptionist that we wanted to check out, and asked if they could call the airport to get us a flight that afternoon or evening. They were really helpful. It was almost as if they wanted to get rid of us. After that, we went upstairs and packed, emptying our room and taking our rucksacks downstairs. The receptionist had told us that if we were going to leave that day we needed to vacate our room, which wasn’t a problem. Downstairs, we were told that they’d got us on a flight at three that afternoon, and that we could pay at the airline desk.

I looked at my watch. ‘We’ve got a couple of hours to kill.’

‘I’m hungry,’ said Emily.

We went for lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant. My treat, as I announced once we’d sat down. Three times during the meal I almost confessed everything, mainly because I couldn’t bear the dreadful silence that hung between us like a shroud. Of course, I didn’t confess – just made several valiant attempts at small talk, trying to get Emily to laugh by cracking jokes about the waiter’s moustache and the restaurant’s décor. My attempts were doomed. I wasn’t in top form anyway – I kept looking over my shoulder to see if my friends from last night had decided to make good on their threat and offer me a full course of Dutch violence.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel to check out and pick up our luggage. We took a taxi to Schipol airport and I watched the city centre recede, vowing silently that one day we would return, when all the mess in my life had been cleaned up. I reached over and squeezed Emily’s hand. To my great relief, she squeezed back and gave me a small smile. Then she shuffled closer and leaned her head on my shoulder.

‘You do love me, don’t you?’ she whispered.

‘Of course I do.’

That was all she said.

The taxi got stuck in traffic and I started to look at my watch agitatedly, worried that we were going to miss our flight.

The driver heard me tutting and said, ‘No worries. I will get you there.’ But the traffic wasn’t moving, and neither were we. Emily stared out of the window, a deeply melancholy expression on her face.

‘I’ve got a headache,’ she said, after we’d been sitting in traffic for about twenty minutes.

I kissed her temple. And we waited some more.

Finally, we arrived at the airport, paid the driver and lugged our rucksacks out of the boot, loading them onto a trolley and rushing into the building. We spotted the EasyJet desk and raced towards it. We had two minutes left to check in, but just before we reached the airport desk, Emily said, ‘Hang on. I need the headache tablets.’ We stopped and she opened the side pocket of her case. ‘I’m sure they’re in here.’

As she groped around inside the case, a puzzled look appeared on her face. She withdrew her hand from the pocket and we both looked at the small plastic bag she was holding.

‘What the fuck?’ Emily said.

The bag contained enough dope to keep Ali G happy for a fortnight. Emily held it like it was a bomb, and looked at me accusingly. I hoped that she could see I was as shocked as her. But then I looked up and saw that a member of the airline staff was coming towards us, pointing at her watch.

‘Put it in your pocket,’ I hissed.

‘What?’

‘Put it…oh shit.’ I grabbed it from her and stuck it in my front pocket, turning away from the woman in the EasyJet uniform who was almost upon us. ‘Flight 342 to London?’ she asked. ‘You need to check in now.’

‘Yes, sorry,’ Emily said. ‘I was just looking for my headache tablets.’ She stuck her hand back in the rucksack pocket and pulled out a box of Anadin, brandishing them triumphantly, as relieved as I was that she hadn’t just produced a bag full of heroin and syringes.

The woman hurried us over to the desk and we plonked our rucksacks on the conveyor belt.

‘Did you pack your bags yourself?’ the woman asked robotically.

‘Yes, yes,’ we nodded in unison.

‘Has anyone had the opportunity to interfere with your luggage?’

‘No, no.’

She handed us our boarding passes and told us which gate to go to. We walked off as quickly as we could. I was sweating; I couldn’t have looked more suspicious if I was wearing a T-shirt with a marijuana leaf on it and a shit-eating grin. I expected some cop to appear to appear at any moment and say, ‘Alright Cheech and Chong, hand it over.’

Emily muttered, ‘You moron.’

‘What? I didn’t know it was there.’

‘You’ve got to dump it. What if we get stopped and searched?’

‘Jesus.’ There were no bins in sight and we were surrounded by people. How the hell was I supposed to discreetly get rid of a huge baggie of dope, especially when we were moving rapidly towards the departure gate, about to miss our flight? I tried to work out the chances that we would get stopped before we boarded the plane. And then, as we neared the departure gate, I saw a uniformed customs officer. With a dog. A dope-sniffing dog.

‘Oh. My. God.’ Emily grabbed my arm.

‘Act cool,’ I said.

‘Dump the fucking dope,’ she said.

To my left, appearing in my field of vision like an oasis in the desert, was a Gents toilet. I left Emily with the trolley and ran inside, trying to look as if I really needed a pee. The cubicle was occupied. I wondered if I was too young to have a heart attack. But then the cubicle opened. I could have kissed the hugely fat man who exited it, until I got a whiff of what he’d left behind. I pushed past him and slammed the cubicle door behind me, immediately taking out the bag of mary jane and emptying it into the stinking bog. I stuffed the bag behind the loo and flushed, rushing back out to find Emily at the desk with lots of grumpy, impatient-looking airline staff. We were just in time. I looked back at the man with the dog. The dog looked at me. I swear the fucking thing winked.

Emily didn’t talk to me much on the plane. She was convinced I had hidden the bag of dope in her rucksack. And it was difficult to protest my innocence with the other passengers listening in. Luckily, it was a short flight, and on the tube from Heathrow I pleaded my innocence until she told me to shut up.

‘I’m going back to my place,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

As she got off the train, I said, ‘I’m sorry, Emily.’

I expected her to say something like, ‘So am I.’ But she didn’t say a word. Just slung her rucksack onto her back and headed off. And to be honest, I was pleased to see her go. I’d had enough emotional shit for one day.

When I got back to my flat, Simon and Nat were sitting in the front room, smoking a joint. ‘Want some?’ said Simon.

I pictured the police dog winking at me. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why are you back? And what happened to your cheek?’

‘It’s a long story.’

I turned to leave the room, but Simon said, ‘Some woman called for you while you were away. Five times. She refused to believe you weren’t here.’

‘Silly beetch,’ said Nat, giggling.

‘Anyway, she finally got the message, but not before leaving a message of her own. There’s a bit of paper stuck to your door with the details on it.’

My trainers felt like they were made of lead as I walked to my room and tore the note down from my door. It said: Please call Elaine Meadows on 8 823 6544. Or she’s going to the police. Underneath, in brackets, Simon had added, What have you been up to? Then he’d drawn a smiley face.

Chapter 33

Siobhan

Saturday. Late.

My birthday’s nearly over, I’m drunk and weary and my tongue, lips and teeth are stained dark with red wine, but I think I feel better, about everything. I’m home again, and it’s got suddenly got so cold outside that I’ve lit the fire. Now I’m sitting here writing, enjoying the warmth and flickering light and – yes – enjoying the solitude of my home. All the windows and doors are locked up securely, of course, but I don’t feel scared any more.

I didn’t invite any of them back after the meal; Mum and Dad like to get to bed early, Jess had a babysitter, and Paula and her new boyfriend Gary were clearly off to do what couples do…. Besides, after the dramas in Amsterdam, I feel a bit like retreating into my nest and letting things calm down a bit.

It would be nice to have Biggles to stroke, but he’s in self-exile in my bedroom; I don’t think he likes the smell of the fresh paint. Probably just as well – there are enough bristles from the paintbrush stuck along my skirting board without needing a load of cat hair rubbed in it too. I’m into this painting lark, it’s very therapeutic. Think I’ll do the banisters next. I’ve been painting like a maniac for two days, since I got back, and it’s helped a lot. Phil always promised to do it for me when he moved in but – predictably – couldn’t tear himself away from whatever sporting event was on television on any given weekend. So I did it myself. I haven’t ever decorated anything before, but I knew what you had to do: sandpaper it, put masking tape along the edges, and paint it – I mean, how hard is that? I’m feeling well pleased with myself.