Текст книги "Second Life"

Автор книги: S. J. Watson

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Chapter Thirty-Three

We slow to a crawl, then stop in traffic. There are lights ahead, a busy junction where a railway bridge spans the road. Hugh is wrong, he must be. Connor’s father isn’t dead, he’s here, and he’s lured his son here, too.

‘Nous sommes ici,’ says the driver, but he’s pointing forward. I peer through the rain; ahead I can see the place. Berger. It’s still open, its doorway looks warm, inviting. A woman comes out, almost collides with a guy going in. I watch as she stands, lights a cigarette. I can’t sit still any longer; I have to get moving. The driver grunts as I tell him I’ll get out here; I pay him and then I’m on the pavement. The rain hits, instantly I’m soaked through. The woman with the cigarette is walking towards me; she nods as we pass, then I’m outside the gym. Lukas’s apartment should be just on the other side of the road, yet now I’m here I don’t know what to do. I glance over the road, past a stack of prefab offices covered in spray-painted graffiti. The building opposite is grey, its windows monotonously regular. It looks institutional; it could be a prison. I wonder which flat is his, and how I’ll get in. Further up the street a train thunders along rails and I see a row of bollards strung like sentinels along the pavement. Just beyond them is a kiosk, bright blue, advertising Cosmétiques Antilles, and just this side of it an alleyway arcs off the road, unlit, towards who-knows-where.

I know, then. I’m sure. I’ve seen this place before, on my computer. I hadn’t recognized it at first, not in the dark, but this is the place. I run past Berger to the mouth of the alleyway. I’m right.

This is where my sister died.

I run into the alleyway. It’s rain-soaked, in almost total darkness. I can’t believe it. I’m here. This is it. This is where my sister’s body was discovered, where her life bled out on to the cobblestones. This is where the nightmare that has been the last few months began.

My mind races. I’ve been a fool. All along. Lukas wasn’t on holiday in Australia, or at least he wasn’t when Kate was killed. It wasn’t a drug dealer who killed her.

Kate wasn’t mugged for a cheap earring, or attacked while buying drugs, or killed in a random attack on her way home from a bar. She’d come here to see him, to meet the father of her son.

I try to picture it. Was he hoping for a reconciliation? I see Kate rejecting him, telling him she wanted nothing to do with him, that he’d never see Connor again. They argue, insults are hurled, a fist is raised.

Or maybe it was his plan all along. To bring her here. To punish her for sending Connor away and then failing to get him back.

I take out my phone. I want Hugh. I need his help, I want to find out how far away he is, but it’s more than that. I want to tell him he’s wrong, that whatever Kate said, she lied. Connor’s father is alive, and he killed her. I want to make him understand, and tell him how I found out, and that it’s my fault and I’m sorry. I want to tell him I love him.

But his phone goes straight to voicemail. Once again, I’m alone.

I feel curiously calm, like stone, yet underneath it my stomach begins to knot and I’m aware it’s the first sign of an incoming tidal wave. I have to stay focussed, remain still. My hand goes to the gun in my bag, yet this time it doesn’t give me confidence. Instead it reminds me of the impossibility of what I have to do. For a moment I want to run, not to the police, but away. Away from everything, to a time when all this had never happened, and Kate is still alive and Connor is happy.

But that’s not possible. Time grinds forward, inexorable. And so I’m stuck; there’s no escape. I want to sink to the wet ground and let the cold rain wash over me.

All of a sudden there’s a noise, a shriek. I startle. A train is passing, overhead. It’s come from nowhere. I look up; it’s yellow and white, travelling so quickly it’s almost a blur. Still I can make out the passengers, all looking downwards, unsmiling. Reading newspapers, no doubt, working on laptops, using their phones. Had none of them seen what happened? Did no one happen to glance down to see my sister, fighting with Lukas?

Or maybe they did, and thought nothing of it. Just a row, an argument. They happen all the time.

The wheels squeal, the train passes, as quickly as it’d come. I look back to the end of the alleyway, where it joins the street.

And he’s there. Even though he can’t possibly know that I’m here, that I’ve worked out where he lives, he’s there. Standing at the end of the alleyway wearing the same blue parka he’d had on the other day. Lukas.

Something is released inside me. The wave builds and I take a step back. ‘What—?’ I begin, but I already know how he found me.

‘You think it was an accident? Letting you see over my shoulder? You’re a clever girl, Julia. I knew you’d work it out. Plus, I knew you wouldn’t want to leave it until tomorrow—’

‘Where’s Connor? Where’s my son?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Damn him. I begin to move. My hand goes to my bag, then inside it. I feel the weight of the gun, its hardness. I wonder if the rain will affect it, then remember it doesn’t matter. I have no intention of using it. I have to scare him. I have to make him think I’m capable of killing, something I now know he himself has done.

No. I stop the thought dead. Connor’s face comes into view. I can’t afford to think of Kate. Not now. I have to focus. I have to make him give me my son back, and then admit what he did, somehow get him to turn himself in.

I raise my face to him. Defiant. The rain hits.

‘I know what you did.’

‘What I did? To Anna? And what’s that, then?’

‘Here. I know what happened here. You were chatting to Kate, online. You … you enticed her here. You killed her …’

He shakes his head.

‘I know you’re Connor’s father. No matter what she told Anna, or me, or Hugh. You’re Connor’s father.’

His eyes narrow. ‘You’re even crazier than I thought. I didn’t even know Kate.’

‘Liar.’ I try to steady my voice and say it again. ‘You’re a liar.’

‘Don’t be absurd. I didn’t—’

I lift my hand up out of my bag. The sweater drops away. He sees the gun, his eyes go wide.

‘Fuck!’

I feel it coming. The boiling anger, the rage. The wave is breaking, but I can’t give in to it, not yet. I have to keep my head clear.

‘You killed Kate!’ My fury is molten lava; it burns and will not be contained. I wipe the rain out of my eyes with the back of the hand holding the gun. ‘You killed my sister!’

He takes a step forward. ‘Julia,’ he says, ‘listen to me …’

A look of fear flashes on his face and his swaggering bravado drops away. He’s Lukas again, the man I once knew. My mind goes to the time I’d been angry with him, told him I wasn’t sure what was happening between us or whether I wanted it to continue. He’d looked frightened, then. I thought that was because he loved me, when really it was because I was close to escape.

I raise the gun. I point it at his chest. I think of pulling the trigger, seeing the red bloom on his shirt. For an instant I wish I could do it.

‘Stay away from me!’

He freezes. I see him try to work out what to do. He probably thinks he could rush at me, grab the gun. He probably thinks I wouldn’t pull the trigger.

‘I said stay away!’

He takes a step back. He looks less certain now, he doesn’t know what to do. He glances back to where he came from, then up to his apartment, as if the answer will be there.

‘This is what’s going to happen.’ I hesitate; I’m trying to calm down. ‘We’re going to go up to your apartment. We’ll let Anna go, and then—’

‘Listen.’ He looks at me, imploring, and for a moment I want to believe he’s innocent, that none of this is real. ‘You’ve got this all wrong. I didn’t kill your sister. I never even met her. Anna said she knew you’d inherited some money and she thought we could get it …’

I stab the gun towards him. ‘You’re lying.’

‘No, listen. Anna’s just a casual thing, you know? I met her online. Just like you. A few months ago—’

‘Shut up!’

‘—we’re not getting married. She said we should blackmail you.’

I take a step towards him. My finger rests on the trigger. ‘Stop pretending this is about money!’

I close my eyes, open them again. I want to believe him. I want to believe that this has nothing to do with Connor.

But it does. My son is missing. Of course it does.

‘Where’s Connor?’

‘It was just part of the game. I don’t know anything about your son. You have to believe—’

I shout. ‘Where is he?’ My voice echoes off the cold walls of the alleyway. He shakes his head. ‘My son is missing. My sister was killed right here, right where we’re standing, and you expect me—’

‘What?’

He looks genuinely confused.

‘She died here.’

He shakes his head. ‘No. No.’

Again, doubt creeps in. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe this is a mistake.

I level the gun. I won’t let him convince me again. Over his shoulder I can see down the alleyway; there’s a figure, crossing the road, coming slowly towards us. A passer-by? There haven’t been any of those, not since we got here.

It looks like Anna. I don’t want him to turn and see her.

‘Stop lying to me.’

‘Julia. Believe me. How can I have killed your sister? I was in Australia. You know that …’

I ignore him. The approaching figure is under the street lamp now. I’m right, it is Anna, and even in the dim light I can see that she looks awful. Her face is bruised, there’s a dark patch on her white shirt that might be blood. I gasp, I can’t help it. ‘Anna!’

Lukas looks round but doesn’t move. She runs past him and joins me.

‘Julia, whatever he’s saying, he’s lying.’ She’s out of breath, but speaks quickly, furiously. ‘Listen to me … he killed Kate … I found out … it was over Connor … but he made me lie … he made me …’

My last shred of hope falls away. I look into his eyes and remember that I loved him – or thought I did at least – and he had killed my sister.

‘It was you.’

‘Don’t be absurd. Don’t believe her! Julia! I didn’t kill your sister. I swear—’

‘You killed her.’ I’m almost whispering; my words are swallowed by the rain. ‘And then you made me fall in love with you.’ I hesitate. The words won’t come. ‘I loved you and you killed my sister. You used me to get close to Connor.’

‘No!’ He steps forward. The rain has plastered his hair to his forehead; it drips from him, soaking him. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, I swear.’ He looks from me to Anna. ‘What are you doing?’ He reaches for her but I wave the gun and he backs off. ‘How can you say you lied for me? I lied for you!’

I lift the gun up.

‘Tell her!’ he says, then. He’s speaking to Anna. ‘Tell her I was abroad that night!’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m not lying for you again.’ She sobs. ‘I lied to the police, but I’m not doing it again. You told me you were abroad, but you weren’t. You killed her, Lukas. You did it.’

‘No!’ he says. ‘No!’ But I can barely hear him. All I can hear is Anna. You did it.

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘I can explain—’

My hand begins to shake. The gun is heavy, slick with rain. ‘Where’s Connor?’

No one speaks.

‘Where is he?’

Anna looks at me. ‘Julia,’ she says, and I can see that she’s crying. ‘Julia. Connor … is upstairs. I tried to protect him …’

I look at the blood on her shirt.

‘I couldn’t. We need an ambulance. We have to get him to a hospital—’

Everything collapses. It’s automatic, impulsive. A reflex. I don’t even think. I look at the gun in my hand and, beyond it, Lukas.

I pull the trigger.

What happens next isn’t supposed to. There’s an instant – an almost imperceptible moment – of something that resembles stillness. Stasis. I don’t feel as if I’ve made an irreversible decision; for a moment it’s as if I can still take it all back. Turn away. Become something else, or follow a path that leads to a different future.

But then the gun fires. My hand leaps up with the kick; there’s a flash and the noise hits. It’s intense; my whole body reacts as the gun’s blast echoes off the walls of the alleyway. A second later it’s gone, replaced by a deadening numbness. In the silence I look in horror at the gun in my hand, as if I can’t believe what I’ve done, and then I look at Lukas.

He’s spinning, away from me, his hands at his chest. Even as he turns I can see that he’s wide-eyed, terrified; within a second or two he’s lying on the ground against the opposite wall of the alley. Stasis returns. There’s a whistling in my ears, but all else is quiet. I look at the gun. There’s a faint smell, dry and acrid, like nothing I’ve known before. Nobody moves. Nothing happens. I can feel my heart beat.

And then a red smudge blooms on his shirt, the world of sound crashes back in, and everything happens at once.

I step back, feel the cold wall against me. Lukas speaks; it sounds unnaturally loud now that my hearing has returned, yet still it’s little more than a thin, reedy noise in his throat. ‘You stupid bitch! You fucking shot me!’

My courage has gone, my bravado has disappeared. My hand goes to my mouth.

He’s panting, looking down at the blood that’s beginning to seep through his fingers. He cries out. I can’t make out what he’s saying, it’s little more than a rasping moan, but he looks from his bleeding chest to Anna and there seems to be a name in there. It sounds like ‘Bella’.

The word seems familiar, vaguely, but I can’t place it. I look over at Anna. Help me, I want to say. What have I done? But she’s looking at me. Her face is cold. Her eyes wide, as if in shock, yet at the same time she’s wearing half a smile.

‘Bella,’ he says again.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ she says. She takes a step forward. She moves slowly. She is utterly calm.

I look at her. I’m incredulous. I don’t know what to say. My mouth opens, closes. She looks at me.

My world is imploding. I can’t work out what is happening. Everything seems too bright, as if I’ve been staring into the sun. I can only make out outlines, shadows. Nothing is solid, nothing seems real.

‘Where’s Connor? Where is he?’

She smiles, but says nothing.

‘Anna? What’s this about? We’re friends …? Aren’t we?’

She laughs. The name begins to float to the surface. I’ve heard it before. I know I have. Bella.

I just can’t yet place it. I look to the body at my feet, desperate for help. ‘Lukas?’ He looks up at me. He’s gasping, pale. His eyes close, open again. ‘Lukas?’

He tries to take another deep breath, to speak, but the words fracture and fail.

Anna speaks. It’s difficult to tell, but it looks as though she’s begun to cry. ‘The police will be here soon, Julia.’

I look at the gun in my hand, at the man I’ve just shot. The truth begins to emerge, yet still it’s distorted, not yet in focus.

‘I didn’t mean to kill him.’

‘You never do—’

‘What—?’

‘Yet people still keep dying …’

I don’t know what she means. ‘What? Anna—!’

‘Oh, Julia. You still haven’t worked it out, have you?’

I begin to sob. ‘It’s your gun. Yours. You’re the one who told me about it.’

‘But I’m not the one who pulled the trigger.’

‘He killed my sister!’

She smiles, then, and steps forward into the light. ‘No, he didn’t.’

Her voice is utterly cold, her words sharp enough to sever flesh.

‘What?’

‘It was me she was meeting that night. I said we needed to talk. But not here.’ She looks at Lukas, lying silently on the floor. ‘At his place. He said we could use it.’

‘What?’

‘But she was late. She stayed for one more drink. So I bumped into her here. Right where we’re standing.’

‘Kate?’

She nods. ‘I told her it was time. We’d tried everything, but you still wouldn’t give Connor back. So I said we ought to tell you the truth.’

A wave of dread wraps itself around me, around my throat. I fight for breath.

‘It was you? Persuading her …’

‘Yes. I said we should tell you about Connor’s father. Tell you that he had family, family that would look after him. Not just Kate—’

Again I look at Lukas. ‘Him?’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous. He was just some bloke I was fucking.’ She shakes her head. ‘I mean me.’

I take a step back. The gun drops to my side. I don’t believe what I’m hearing.

‘But—’

‘She wouldn’t listen. She said she wasn’t telling you. It would hurt you too much.’ She shakes her head. ‘As if you getting hurt matters in the slightest, after what you did. We fought.’

‘What …? Who are you?’

‘I didn’t mean to push her over.’

‘You killed her!’

She looks at me. She raises her chin, defiant. Her hate is almost physical; sticky and cloying. It penetrates deep within me. She looks at me and I can see that I disgust her.

‘I pushed her over. She hit her head. I was angry, I wanted to stop, but …’ She shrugs. ‘I didn’t know she was dead when I left her. But yes. I left her here and I went round to his place’ – she looks again at Lukas – ‘and then the next day I found out she was dead. And I was glad. You know that? Glad I left her here, alone.’

My sobs turn into scalding tears. They run down my face. I raise the gun.

‘I’m glad because that’s exactly what you did to my brother.’

‘What …?’ I say, but an image comes. The last time I’d stood over a body, a dying man. And then finally it snaps into focus. I remember the name Marcus had had for his sister.

‘Bella … You’re Bella.’

I see it now, the thing I’ve failed to see all this time. In certain lights, from certain angles. She looks a little like her brother.

Suddenly I’m back there. I see him that night, his face ashen, bloodless, yet filmed with sweat. He looked unreal somehow, made of rubber. Spittle fringed his mouth; there was vomit on the floor. ‘Go!’ said Frosty.

‘No. I can’t.’

She looked up at me. She was crying. ‘You have to. If they find any of us here—’

‘No.’

‘—it’ll be over for all of us.’ She stood up, she held me. ‘There’s nothing we can do for Marky now, honey. He’s gone. He’s gone—’

‘No!’

‘—now you have to go, too.’

And then I’d seen it. The truth. The people’s lives I’d ruin by staying behind with a man it was too late to help.

‘But—’

‘I promise I’ll let them know he’s here.’ She kissed me, the top of my head. ‘Go, go now. And look after yourself.’

And then she went back to Marcus and, with one final glance at his body, I turned away and left him behind.

I look up at the woman I’d thought was my friend Anna. At the woman who’s been pretending to be my son’s girlfriend. ‘You’re Marcus’s sister.’

No response. My hands shake.

‘Look. I don’t know what you think—’

‘Marcus was coming home. You know? We were going to look after him. We loved him. His family. Not you. You weren’t even there. You left him.’

‘He overdosed, Anna! You might not like that, but it’s true. He’d been clean for weeks, he took more than he could cope with. It was nobody’s fault.’

‘Is that right?’ She shakes her head slowly, her eyes narrowed with bitterness. ‘You were selling your photographs, buying him drugs. I know that—’

‘No. No.’

‘And then when he couldn’t take it any more, when he overdosed, you left him to die.’

‘No! I loved him. I loved Marcus …’ I’m sobbing now, my body convulsing, my tears mingling with the rain that runs down my face. ‘I’ve never loved anyone like I loved him.’

Her cold gaze locks with mine.

‘You don’t even know what happened. He was dead already. I had to leave. Marcus had … we were … I just had to go.’

‘You left him there, dying on the floor. You ran away. Back home to start your new life, with your lovely little house and your oh so fucking successful husband. And your son. Darling Connor.’

‘Connor. Where is he?’

‘You took everything from me. My mother hanged herself—’

I point the gun at her. ‘Where is he?’

‘Then my father went, too. You should have gone to prison for what you did.’ She pauses, her head tilted. Over the driving rain I can hear sirens. ‘And now you will. They’re coming for you.’

I scream. ‘What have you done to my son?’

‘Connor? Nothing. I’d never hurt Connor. He’s the only thing I’ve got left.’

It hits me then, finally. ‘Marcus? Marcus was Connor’s father?’

She says nothing, yet as much as I don’t want to believe it, I know it’s true. I see it all. It must’ve been when Kate came to visit. Just before Marcus died.

She nods. ‘I didn’t know he’d had a child. But then last year Kate told me all about Connor. How she’d got pregnant when she visited her sister in Berlin, and her sister still didn’t know. I had no idea she was talking about Marcus, but then she showed me that picture of the two of you. I nearly told her that Marcus was my brother, but I decided not to. You know why? Because, finally, it all made sense. After all these years I now knew who the bitch was who’d left him to die.’ She looks me in the eye. ‘It was you, Julia. And here I was, living with your sister.’ She shakes her head. ‘That photo. I started to see him everywhere …’

‘If you’ve hurt my son—’

‘He’s my nephew, and I want him, Julia. He can’t stay with you. Look at you. Look at what you’ve done. You’re not fit to be his mother. I proved it. I sent the videos to Hugh, to everyone. They’ll all know what a cheap slut you are now.’

So that’s it. It had been about getting Connor back, all along. Not the money.

I look at Lukas. Lukas, who thought he was blackmailing me for money. He’s lying, motionless, his unseeing eyes wide open.

I hear a car pull up, a door open. I daren’t turn round. I look at the gun in my hand. It’s as if it has nothing to do with me.

He’s dead. The man who is the proof of what’s been going on, is dead. And I killed him.

‘A slut,’ says Anna. She takes a step towards me. She’s almost close enough to touch. I can hear footsteps, close by. I risk a quick glance over my shoulder. Two police cars have pulled up and Hugh is getting out of the first, along with three or four officers. They’re all shouting, a mix of French and English. Hugh’s voice is the only one I can make out. ‘Julia!’ he’s saying. ‘Julia! Put the gun down!’

I look at him. In the car behind him I can see another figure and with a jolt of relief I realize it’s Connor. He’s looking at me. He looks lost, bewildered. But he’s alive. Anna was lying. He’s safe. Hugh must’ve found him, wandering Gare du Nord, just as Anna had pretended to. Or perhaps he finally relented and turned his phone on, to call his dad.

‘Julia!’ says Hugh again. He skids to a halt. The police are ahead of him, they’ve crouched on the ground. There are guns pointing at me. I look at Anna.

‘She killed Kate!’ I say.

Anna speaks, too quietly for anyone but me to hear. ‘You’re a junkie and a slut and a murderer.’

I’m still looking at my husband. I remember what he’d said, on the phone on the way here. Connor’s father is dead.

He’d known. Kate must have told him. And he’d kept it to himself.

I look back at Anna. I know she’s telling the truth. She’s sent the pictures to Hugh.

She smiles.

‘I took it all. I’ve ruined your life, Julia, and now you’ll lose your son.’

‘No—’ I begin, but she silences me.

‘It’s over, Julia.’

I raise the gun. The police shout, Hugh says something, but I can’t make it out. I know she’s right. Whatever happens, it’s over now. There’s no way back. I’ve loved someone, someone who isn’t my husband. I’ve loved someone and I’ve shot him. I can’t go back from this. My life – my second life, the one I escaped into when I ran from Berlin – is over.

‘I should kill you,’ I say.

‘Then do it.’

I close my eyes. It’s what she wants. I know it is. And if I do she’s won. But I don’t care, now. I’ve lost Hugh, I’ll lose Connor. It’s irrelevant.

My hand is shaking, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to fire the gun, and at the same time I don’t. Maybe it’s not too late, maybe I can still prove it was Bella who killed my sister, that she tricked me into shooting Lukas. But I can’t work out what difference it will make; Lukas may have been many things, but he was no murderer. I’ve killed an innocent man; whether deliberately or not hardly seems to matter. I can’t live with myself either way.

I open my eyes. Whatever happens next, whether I shoot or not, it’s over.