23

Stewart turns to kiss her one last time, but she’s already closing the door. She’s right, of course; he has to be faster about this. It feels as though an eternity has passed since the gunshot. Since the neighbours heard and called the police. As he tiptoes carefully through the back garden, he has the presence of mind to turn and look at the neighbouring houses. No lights on. No sign of movement. That has to be a good thing. He’s reached the back fence. A tall wooden structure, maybe six feet high. He’s so aware of what’s in his pockets. As he pulls himself up and over the top, he worries that something might fall out. He might leave a clue behind. He might get himself into trouble. He might let Zara down.

He’s in a dark garden. Hard to get your bearings, especially when you don’t know the area. Trust Zara. She said to go left in the neighbouring garden. Go left and you come out on the next street. Trust her. He’s going left, tiptoeing through the garden. Don’t wake anyone up. Look at your situation, for Christ’s sake. You’re walking through a stranger’s garden, with drugs and money bulging your pockets, having just left the scene of a murder. Okay, don’t think about it. That’s not a healthy thing to look at. Just makes you more nervous. He makes it through the garden and out a side gate. Onto the street. Well lit. Quiet.

Now he’s a young man, well dressed, in a deserted suburban street. Stewart knows he must look conspicuous. He feels incredibly conspicuous. He’s walking along the street, wondering what he ought to do. Does he get a taxi? There are none around, and he’s not sure where to tell them to pick him up. Does he want a taxi driver to pick him up so close to the scene of a murder? Not really. His heart may be racing, but he’s thinking clearly. He’s excited. He’s enjoying it. By God, he’s enjoying it. Stewart chuckles to himself. He can’t believe it, but this is fun.

There are no sirens. There are no police rushing to arrest him. He walks for what seems like an age, for what feels like miles, before he begins to gather a sense of familiarity. There are buildings that he’s seen before. He looks at his watch and then looks away. He has no idea what time he left the house, no idea how long it’s been since the shooting. Safe to call a taxi? He knows he’s nowhere near home. Home is a flat in the west of the city, shared with a friend. They’ve been pals since college. Both studied design. Both had wanted to get into the videogame industry when they started. His friend Tom, being much more gifted than Stewart, managed to get the job he wanted. Stewart, on the other hand, was stuck working in advertising. He only left college a year ago and hasn’t given up hope.

There’s a little bench built into a wall at the side of the street. Presumably for pensioners during the day, although why they would be there he can’t fathom. It’s an area of warehouses and business parks, bustling with work during the day. This is a Friday night, into Saturday morning, and there are only a few cars passing by. Stewart sits on the bench and finds a taxi-firm number in the phonebook of his mobile. He calls it, tells them where to pick him up and waits. Every car passing could be a police car. Every noise could be someone coming to get you. It’s thrilling. He smiles to himself as the taxi pulls up at the side of the road.

Getting out of the taxi, into the flat. Making no noise. He doesn’t want his flatmate to know that he has drugs and cash on him. It’s not safe. Maybe, a couple of years down the line, it becomes a story to tell. Not yet. He trusts Tom, and doesn’t want to get him into any trouble. Stewart makes his way carefully to his bedroom. Once he’s inside, he feels the thrill depart and the exhaustion arrive. He’s been living on his nerves for the last hour and it’s drained him. There’s an urge to lie on the bed in his clothes and let the sleep take him. No. Resist. You still have to be careful, no matter how safe you feel.

Stewart empties his pockets, putting everything on the bed. He looks at the money first, because he knows what that is and can see its value. He doesn’t count it all; the bundles of notes are mixed. He can get a good idea of the value, though. There’s at least a thousand pounds in each of the two piles of notes, each held together by a single elastic band. Drug money. Dirty money. He’s reluctant to handle it. He doesn’t want to be associated with such a thing. Stewart doesn’t earn a lot of money, but he isn’t consumed by such a love of it that this money means anything to him. It doesn’t mean anything to Zara, either. He’s convinced she’s not the sort of woman to be motivated by it. She wants rid of the money and the drugs so that she won’t get into trouble.

The drugs. He doesn’t know how much the bags are worth – he’s never bought before. The few experiments he’s had were all at someone else’s expense. He quite liked the coke he took, he liked the buzz. He knew that if it was offered to him again he would take it, but he wasn’t so enamoured that he’s ever gone looking for it. Now there’s a bag on the bed in front of him, and he hates it. He hates that he’s stuck with it. He hates that Zara has been forced to go and get it to remove it from her house. It was haunting her. Threatening to have her put in jail.

He can’t stop thinking about her. As he’s looking around his bedroom, looking for somewhere to hide it all, he’s thinking about her. He’s thinking about her as he takes a shoebox down from the top of his wardrobe. A pair of dress shoes inside. Bought for a wedding. Too tight, they left him with a blister on the side of his big toe. He’s stuffing the money inside one shoe and the drugs into the other. Not a great hiding place, but it’s only a bad hiding place if someone comes looking. If someone comes looking, then he has no prospect of hiding it all anyway. There’s nowhere in the flat where he can make two wads of cash and two bags of drugs disappear. If the police come knocking, then there’s no hiding.

Stewart’s undressing slowly, relieved to be out of his clothes. Out of his clothes again. He thinks about Zara once more as he pulls himself under the sheets. He thinks about what he had been doing an hour or so ago. On that couch. Zara underneath him. God, what a night! He starts to laugh. Quiet. Don’t let Tom hear you. Don’t give him an excuse to ask any awkward questions in the morning. Silence from Tom’s room. He lies back in bed, getting excited at the thought of Zara. Getting excited at the thought of the gunmen bursting in on them. He shouldn’t be excited by that. That was two guys who could have killed him. That thought makes him recoil. Why is he excited by that situation? It’s getting easier to understand why so many people are tempted into that sort of seedy life.

He runs his fingers through his hair. A pain shoots through him. It’s the shock as much as the pain that catches him out. He had been hit over the head by one of the killers. It might have been a punch; he might have been hit with the gun. Good Lord, hit with the gun. It could have gone off. It could have blown his brains out. Shit! He carefully feels the bump. Doesn’t feel like there’s any blood there. No cut. Just a lump. He gets out of bed, puts on the lamp and gets a little shaving mirror out of a drawer. The bump isn’t visible under his hair. He’ll have a better look in the bathroom mirror in the morning. For now it seems that nobody will be able to spot it.

He’s forgotten about his pathetic spell on the floor. Chosen to forget. That was an embarrassment. He let Zara down. He embarrassed himself. Still, nobody would know. Who would speak about it? The gunmen would surely never admit where they had been and what they had seen. Zara would never humiliate him by saying. He would certainly keep it to himself. As he gets back into bed and switches off the lamp, he’s thinking about her again. Thinking about her naked at the back door, kissing him goodbye. He’s not excited this time, but worried. Worried for her. Where is she right now?