Trust (13 page)

It was a question he’d been asking himself since that scary moment last night when he’d realized something was happening between them and it wasn’t just the usual casual pick-up he was accustomed to.

He kept swinging from one thing to another. Moments of clarity when he knew there was something...
different
... about this. Then he would shy away, as if he didn’t want to acknowledge that.

Was he scared?

Dean Bailey
scared?

Or was it his self-defense kicking in? Every time he picked up a hint that something was out of place. A gap in her back-story. The way she would turn a seemingly innocent conversation into a pressing question:

What
are
you up to? Is this what you’re always like, or are you plotting something special?

All of this was new territory to him. He’d never been in a position where he would tangle himself up in questions like this. Always on the wrong foot.

Was this fucking
normal?

Jesus. He’d only known her for 24 hours, but what he’d said last night – a heat of the moment thing, he’d put it down to at the time – was feeling more and more true.

I think I’ve just fallen head over heels...

“Reuben’s a good man,” he said to her, and he still just about believed it. “He’s got insight. You should listen to him when he tells you I’m trouble. You should run a million miles.”

Jess had dipped her head, but now she looked up through long lashes at him.

“I’m scared,” she said in a small voice.

For a moment he took that wrong, didn’t realize she was talking about exactly the kind of fear that had taken a hold of him over these past 24 hours, and not something physical.

Then he got it.

“What happened last night,” she said. “I’ve never known anything like that. Like
this
. There’s a voice screaming in my head to do exactly what you just said: get up, walk out of here, get into my car and drive as far away as I can.”

“So why don’t you?”

Her look never left his.

As she stood, the fronts of her thighs pressing against the table edge.

As she leaned forward, put a hand to his cheek, his neck, fingertips in the coarse hair behind his ear.

Pressed her mouth against his.

It was a delicate kiss, unlike any they’d shared during the night. Lips barely touching, a brief flutter, and then pulling away.

“You don’t think I’m trying?” she said. “You don’t think I would if I could?”

§

They walked.

Dean wasn’t a walking kind of guy. It wasn’t that he didn’t like being outdoors. Those stories Jess told of the old get-togethers – the kids chasing through the streets and over building sites and wasteland – they spoke to something deep inside him. They were the kind of memories that were always of sunny days and the exhilaration of running free.

He
liked
outdoors.

And it wasn’t that he didn’t like the exercise. He looked after himself. He made sure of that. You needed to keep your mind and body sharp in this game.

Walking just wasn’t safe.

He knew all about the gangs of teenagers who ran entire housing estates throughout the city. He wasn’t scared of them, but he understood the risks: for every low-tier criminal who ran with the street gangs and knew to report up the hierarchy, there were dozens of outsiders and psychos. Plenty of loose cannons, to use Reuben’s phrase; any one of them liable to take a pop if the opportunity arose.

And then there were the ones who
were
part of the hierarchies, like Putin’s mob and the other East Europeans, not to mention some of the other old-school London firms like the Bailey Boys.

The risk assessment for something as simple as a walk in the open air was always loaded against someone like Dean.

It was like being stupid-famous, but without the paparazzi and with more guns and knives.

It wasn’t worth the stress.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just walked like this.

They headed south, taking a foot-bridge over East India Dock Road towards the Blackwall Tunnel, then cut through towards the more up-market part of the Docklands development.

Back in the day this had all been very different. Working-class communities in tightly packed streets of terraced housing, bustling docks and warehouses. Now, Canary Wharf and the other high-rises towered over everything, and most of the old terraces had been demolished or gentrified beyond recognition.

“My brother’s got a place here,” Dean said, as they paused on a bridge over a narrowing of one of the old waterways. “Owen, not Lee. Nice apartment. Balcony overlooking the Thames. The works.”

“Not your style?”

He shook his head. “Owen’s always liked all that,” he said. “Me, I just keep my head down, you know?”

“You ever thought of getting out of all this?”

“All the time,” he said. “But it’s complicated, isn’t it? You can’t ever escape it.”

“My parents tried.”

He said nothing. She’d asked earlier about that, as if he might have some kind of insight. But that wasn’t something she should get into. Not now. Not ever. He’d seen how she tended to just barge in, and that wasn’t going to help anyone.

They walked on.

After a time they came to a point where they could look out across the great hairpin bend in the Thames that wrapped around the North Greenwich peninsula, the dome of the O2 Arena with its spiked canopy another familiar landmark here.

For a time he was lost in his thoughts.

It really was the longest time since he’d been out like this. No protection. He’d be a sitting duck if Putin or any of the others decided now was the time to do something.

It was liberating.

It was like those sun-tinged memories of running through the streets as a kid.

When he glanced across to Jess, about to say something to this effect, he saw that she was crying.

Not big, wracking sobs or anything. Just narrow, wet tear tracks down each cheek. He almost didn’t spot it at all.

“Hey,” he said. He didn’t reach for her. He didn’t understand this sudden change. It was like a whole new language.

She glanced briefly at him, then returned her gaze to the dark gray waters of the Thames. A boat was going past, official-looking – river police or something. Farther to the left, a long, glass-sided tour boat sat low in the water.

“Sorry.” She swallowed, then reached up to wipe at the tears with the inside of her wrist.

“What is it?” The kind of question you already knew the answer to, but still asked.

“I’ve never really spoken about them,” she said. “Since the funeral. Since that day I told my grandparents all about it and then just left. I’ve never been able to. Never had anyone I felt I could talk to about it. Someone I could trust in that way.”

She turned, sucked briefly at her lower lip, then added, “I haven’t even cried about them. Not once in eighteen months. Until now.”

She stepped into his embrace and buried her face into the hollow between shoulder and neck. And Dean Bailey hardly felt like a complete bastard at all, as he held her and soothed her and tried not to think about how he’d not exactly lied to her, but how he had avoided sharing what he knew.

So he held her and stroked her hair, and felt the tension slowly dissipate from her body, and he realized, all of a sudden, that while she had a million and one reasons to doubt
him
, at this moment all his suspicions about
her
had been washed away.

He trusted her.

He cared for her.

He’d fallen.

Head right over fucking heels.

It was like nothing he’d ever known.

All that stuff took me completely unawares.

I thought I’d dealt with it, moved on.

Hell, it was
eighteen
months
in the past. What kind of crap was this?

I’d felt it as a knot in my gut, sitting there in the closed pub with our cups of coffee and talking about my parents’ crash. The way he’d tried to reassure me. The way he talked about professional hits in much the same way a banker would talk about the return on a potential investment or a teacher might talk about developing a lesson plan. A professional hitman just wouldn’t
do
it like that. Too messy.

Everything was so damned messy.

I think I understood then, as we sat there, that this was one particular mess I’d been carrying around inside me for eighteen months. Not dealt with at all: I’d run away from it, or tried, at least.

I ran away from things too easily. I knew that.

I guess I’d always done that.

Far easier than dealing with things full-on.

I decided I needed to see the river. That route, down from one of the older parts of Poplar through Docklands to the Thames must be one my parents had walked. They both loved the water, so why wouldn’t they head for the river whenever the fancy took them? They’d have known this place before it had been redeveloped, they’d have known it when the docks had still thrived; they’d have watched its transformation. I could be walking right in their footsteps.

I should call Maureen. See how she was, how the property business was doing. Talk to her about old times, how she’d got to know my parents.

I should call my grandparents, tell them some of what I’d learned.

I bet Granddad would have some stories to tell, if he judged that now was the time.

Stories I could only get now from people like Maureen and my grandparents, from Dean even. I’d be getting to know my parents as if they were strangers, or friends of friends.

We stood looking across the river towards the spiked dome of the O2 Arena.

I glanced across to Dean and he had a distant look on his face. Then he turned to me and I realized I had tears tracking down my cheeks, and he said, “Hey.”

I folded into his arms. For a moment I stopped caring who he was or what he might be keeping from me and I just clung to him.

The hardness of his body – shoulder and collarbone against my face – the silky smoothness of his suit, the freshness of the river air with a hint of his aftershave as I breathed in. Strength. His arms wrapped around me. The way he stood solid, adjusting marginally as I leaned into him. The heat of his breath on the crown of my head, his chin hard against my scalp.

With one hand buried in my hair, he tipped my head back and kissed me, firm lips, pressing tongue, darting and retreating.

I pressed back against him, feeling him responding instantly with a new hardness.

He clung onto me a second or two longer, then let go, turned to stand with his hands on the metal railing before us. His head was turned away now, a tension in his body.

I felt the same tension. A deep, sexual thing, but also so much more.

I’d never wanted anyone so badly.

He looked at me, and there was something more in his dark eyes. Something impassioned.
Anguished
.

“Reuben was right to warn you away from me,” he said. “You should go. Leave. You’ll only get hurt if you stay here.”

I stared. Shook my head. “What do you mean?”

“I’m trouble,” he said. “Reuben’s right: I’m stirring things up. Things are going to get rough around here.
Really
rough. You don’t want to be involved. I’m giving you the chance to get out, you understand? I don’t understand you. I don’t know who you are or what you are, or why you’re really here, but I’ve realized I don’t care about any of that. This thing... it’s gone way beyond that now. You should go.”

This thing
...

He’d never trusted me. He’d just admitted as much – he still didn’t fully believe me.

But this
thing
...

He didn’t care about anything other than what was between us.

And if I felt that way too, how could I possibly leave?

I stepped towards him, put a hand to his arm, and he didn’t back away.

“Protect me, then,” I told him. “Don’t let bad shit happen. I’m not going anywhere, Dean.”

§

We walked some more, a slight gap between us, although I half-expected him to take my hand, as he had at the fight.

“Have you ever been in prison?” I asked him.

He glanced at me, then shook his head briefly. “Only visiting,” he said. “The old man. Lee. A couple of friends. The usual stuff.”

Usual for him, maybe. “Lee? What did he do?”

Dean laughed. “What didn’t he do?”

We came to a small area of green by the river: trees, a bit of grass, a couple of benches. A pair of scruffy pigeons took off as we approached.

Dean went on: “He’s got a temper on him, Lee. He doesn’t always know when to pick his fights, you know what I mean?”

I remembered Dean taking my hand and leading me away from Putin and his sidekick in the street the previous day. He’d said something similar then about knowing when to walk away. “You look out for him, don’t you?”

He looked down, scuffed a foot. “You wouldn’t think. He took a right pasting last night, didn’t he?” Then: “I do what I can. Me and Lee, we’ve always been close.”

“And Owen?”

“Older brother syndrome. Gets a bit up himself sometimes. When the old man was put away Owen took a lot on himself. He did good, but he had to – you know, distance himself a bit.”

“Trying to fill your dad’s shoes.”

Dean nodded. He stopped, and turned to me, meeting my look with a challenging one of his own. “Look, I know you must look down on me. On us. It’s only natural. But we’re the good guys here. Believe me.”

I remembered what DI Glover had said. The Baileys were throwbacks to another age. They had different standards, different rules. But the world had moved on: Dean was just trying to hold back a relentless tide.

“You said you can’t escape all this, but don’t you ever even daydream about doing just that? Leaving all this behind? Couldn’t you find a way? You could have a different life if you wanted.”

I was fishing for something, I knew. Hope, maybe. Possibilities. The dream that we might have something more than these few snatched moments.

“Maybe. But I have stuff to do, you know? Responsibilities. I can’t just drop everything and live the high life like some flash bastard might.”