Second Shot

“No, I think you should swing by the office and pick up a pool vehicle,” Sean said. “Then if things get too bad you can always move the pair of them to a more secure location.”

“If I do, it could take me another hour to get to her now.”

“She’s not in any immediate danger. The press are a nuisance, but they’re not about to break down her front door for the sake of a story.”

“OK,” I said, on my feet and heading for the shower. “Tell her I’m on my way and I’ll be with her as soon as I can.”

“I already did,” he said with the ghost of a smile in his voice. There was a pause, almost a hesitation. “Are you OK?”

I stopped moving, heard the tension under the words and knew there was a lot riding on my answer, one way or another.

“Fine,” I said at last, and found I had to force myself to breathe. I swallowed, started again, more casually this time. “I’m fine, Sean. Don’t worry about it.”

“Good,” he said, so devoid of emotion that I didn’t know if I’d said the right thing or not. “I’ll let you get sorted,” he added, more businesslike. “Take care, Charlie.” And with that he was gone.

“Yeah,” I said to a dead connection. “You, too.”

Simone’s house was an ordinary postwar semidetached, with fake Elizabethan-style timber on the upper story and crisp red brick below The front door was solid wood and painted pillar-box red. There was an integral garage to one side, with a tall narrow gate leading to the back garden.

It looked as though the front garden had been on the neglected side, although the booted feet of the journalists and photographers now trampling all over it had reduced it to a soggy brown mush underfoot and made it difficult to tell.

I braked to a halt just short of the patchy gravel driveway and called ahead on my mobile before I attempted going in. It rang out at the other end for what seemed like a long time before Simone answered.

I wasn’t brave or foolish enough to attempt getting out of the car while I waited for her to pick up. As I eyed the movements of the pack in front of me, it was like watching hyenas bickering among themselves while they waited for the next kill.

It had taken me two and a half hours, all told, from Sean’s phone call to my arrival, including the time I’d spent detouring to pick up one of the company Shoguns.

I’d spent a lot of the journey sitting in neutral, looking at the brake lights of the car in front through the sweep of the windscreen wipers, and thinking about Sean. Or, more specifically, thinking about his actions of the day before.

I understood his motives, in a way, but surely he could have found another method of expressing his doubts over my abilities, short of pulling a knife on me. I could just imagine what my father would have to say on the subject, if anybody ever tortured me enough to make me tell him. He and Sean had never exactly been close, and this would hardly have endeared him further.

One of the photographers turned in the driveway, spotted the Sho-gun and tried to get his camera up without his fellow paparazzi noticing. When the rest finally cottoned on they all surged towards me, elbowing one another out of the way, their apparent camaraderie vanishing the instant there was the scent of fresh blood in the air.

I put the car into gear and nudged forwards. The pressmen took one look at the substantial bull bars on the front of the four-by-four and reluctantly parted to let me through. Had they not done so, I was in two minds about whether I was prepared to stop.

I pulled up as close to the front door as I could manage, checked my shirt collar out of habit and shoved my way through the jostling pack, ignoring the questions and microphones and flashguns that were thrust into my face. Simone must have been watching for me because she opened the front door just as I reached it and I slid through the gap with hardly a pause.

The baying of the press continued outside, muffled by the thickness of the wooden door. Simone leaned back against the timber and closed her eyes momentarily.

The hallway was small and painted pale yellow, with three doorways leading off it and a carpeted staircase to the upper floor. The pictures on the walls were conventional mass market prints in cheap but cheerful frames. I wondered briefly if the fact that Simone could now afford to shop for originals would change her taste in art.

“How long have they been here?” I said, jerking my head towards the driveway.

“It seems like forever,” Simone said wearily, opening her eyes. “Since first light, I think. That’s when they started ringing the goddamn doorbell, anyway.”

“Where’s Ella?”

She rolled her eyes upwards. “They were scaring her, banging on the front windows, so I told her to stay upstairs. She has her own TV and stuff in her room.”

“Sean said Matt had gone public. What happened?”

Simone glanced briefly towards the stairwell as though to check there were no tiny ears within hearing distance. Then she picked up a folded newspaper from the hall table and thrust it towards me.

“Here. Read it for yourself.”