There are huge television screens hanging from the ceiling, all showing sport, the commentators and the graphics competing with each other. There’s an awful lot of basketball; again, Steve doesn’t ever recall a lot of basketball talk in actual Ireland. Try as he might, though, Steve cannot find any screen showing the snooker. There’s some Premier League football, and Steve sees that it is raining in England. He really can’t wait to get back.
Yes, “enjoy” is the wrong word. Steve hasn’t enjoyed himself since Debbie died. Enjoyment is not how he measures his life anymore, so the question is unfair.
Is he glad? That’s a better question. He’s glad to have spent time with Amy, that’s certain. Glad to have protected her, and to have been protected by her. It’s not every daughter-in-law who will high-five you when you’ve shot a drug dealer in a Coldplay T-shirt, is it?
He’s glad to have met Rosie, Steve has to admit that to himself, and he wonders if he will see her again when this is over? Where will she go? Back to her island? He hopes not; she is wasted on an island.
He is glad, he supposes, to have done something. To have made his world bigger, if only for a week. He is glad that he has remembered that he’s pretty good at his job. That he can do more than find lost dogs and look at CCTV. Though he is very much looking forward to getting back to doing both.
But, yes, he’s not bad at this. That’s why he’s here in this pub. And that’s why he’s thinking about what will happen next. Because the end is now in clear sight.
Although Steve feels the magnet of Axley beginning to pull him back, he is surprised to feel there’s also a part of him resisting this. And at the very moment he sees the person he’s been looking for, drinking a pint and talking on his phone, Steve realizes what these conflicting forces are.
The thing that is pulling him back to Axley is that groove in the sofa. The place that is the very shape of him. The place he has settled into so thoroughly over the years that it fits him exactly.
And the thing resisting that pull is remembering that, not so long ago, there were two grooves in that sofa. And one has vanished, as if it was never there.
It is not Axley that Steve wants to go back to; it is Debbie. But it is interesting to Steve that, wherever he’s traveled, she has been right there with him. It’s been nice to show her a bit of the world.
She’s here now, Steve knows that, as he pulls up a chair and sits down next to François Loubet.
95
Amy has taken a lemon sweatshirt from around her waist and tied it around Jeff’s thigh as a tourniquet.
Despite the extraordinary pain he must be feeling, Jeff is not screaming. Firstly, because he has too much self-respect, and secondly, because Amy told him she will shoot him if he makes any loud noises.
Also thirdly, because, after marching Jeff out of the boardroom, rather than bundling him into a car, she doubled back and put him in Henk’s private den, behind the boardroom mirror. So Amy assumes that Jeff is starting to understand that everything is not as it seems.
They can see Susan Knox as she is looking through the personnel files on her computer.
“She won’t find anything,” says Jeff, voice getting quieter as Amy’s gun presses closer to his temple.
“I know,” says Amy. “She’s not looking at the files. She’s deleting the files.”
Jeff looks over at her. In the boardroom, Susan is making a phone call.
Amy says to Jeff, “If I put the gun down, do you promise to stay quiet for one minute?”
Jeff nods, then gestures down to the tourniquet. Amy pulls it tighter, as the sound of Susan’s call comes through the speakers.
“It’s me…I know…I know…but it is an emergency…yeah, are you in a bar? Can you hear me? François?…They know it’s not Max…no…no, it’s all good, nothing for you to worry…Amy thinks it’s Jeff…yep, Jeff…she shot him…I know, that’s Amy…well, I’m going to confirm it for her…we don’t have to kill him…I’ll explain it all, he’ll understand…we can’t, François…me or him?…Jesus, Jeff’s my friend…I’ll sort it, François…but I said no more killing…I’ll need more money…another hundred thousand…and this is the last one…the father-in-law? I don’t know…Take care, take care.”
Jeff looks at Amy. “You knew it was Susan?”
“No,” says Amy. “I just knew it wasn’t me and it wasn’t Max. Which left you and Susan.”
“So you shot me? It could still have been Henk.”
“Yeah, I suppose so, but it turns out it wasn’t, doesn’t it?” says Amy. “Point Six, Jeff: Act decisively. I wanted to see what she would do. If she had called the police, I’d have known it was you, and if she had called Loubet, I’d have known it was her.”
Jeff grimaces in pain. “You could have just punched me.”
“A bit of logic and a bit of chaos,” says Amy. “Seems to have done the trick.”
“A bit of Steve and a bit of you,” says Jeff.
“Shall we go and chat with Susan?” says Amy. “Then maybe get you to a hospital?”
Jeff nods. “I’ve got a guy on Harley Street who does all my gunshot stuff.”
“I didn’t hit anything important,” says Amy.
“But why Susan?” Jeff asks.
“How long has Susan worked for you, Jeff?” Amy asks.
“Thirty years or so?” guesses Jeff.
“How much does she get paid?”
“Sixty grand,” says Jeff.
“And where does she live?” Amy asks.
“Hampstead,” says Jeff.
“How many people do you know who live in Hampstead on sixty grand a year? She must have been fleecing you for years.”
