A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [162]
We talk for perhaps an hour, and it surprises me how easily I disguise my apprehension from him. I am thinking always of the consequences of telling Saul about JUSTIFY, of asking him to release details to the press and on the Internet should anything happen to me. But I can stay focused on what he is saying: any thoughts I might have about the timing of a confession exist only as an undercurrent to the conversation.
Saul is preoccupied by his work, thinking of chucking his job in and going into finance. He says:
‘After university, we all went into television for the glamour. I thought TV would provide some outlet for self-expression, but a lot of the time it’s just tedious and vain, full of guys with goatee beards wearing Armani suits. I need to make some money.’
I don’t try to sway him one way or the other; I simply hear him out. It is the longest and most fulfilling conversation we have had in over eighteen months, just the two of us talking into the night. All the time I am conscious of a thawing in Saul’s attitude towards me, the gradual reconciliation of a ten-year friendship that had been allowed to fester and grow stale. The old-established ties were always there: they simply needed to be rekindled.
Then, when both of us are slightly drunk and, although not tired, starting to think about going to bed, Saul’s mobile phone goes off. It is still packed inside his overnight bag on the kitchen floor, the ring muffled by clothes.
‘Who the fuck’s that?’ I ask, looking at the clock on the wall. It is half past three in the morning.
‘Probably Mia,’ he says, getting up out of his chair and struggling to retrieve the phone. ‘She always calls late. Doesn’t sleep.’
But it is not her.
The signal is bad and Saul has to go outside to take the call and when he comes back into the kitchen he tells me that Kate and her boyfriend have been killed in a car accident. He tells me quickly and without inflection, the news of her death first, then the place where the crash took place, and the name of the boyfriend. William.
He says that he is so sorry.
I cannot stay in the room with him. I do not even ask a question. I am outside, through the open door, and stumbling on gravel, his voice behind me just a single word: ‘Alec’.
There is no feeling in me but rage. No sadness or pain, just a sense of powerless anger, like punching air. I turn and am conscious of Saul standing in the doorway, his head absolutely dropped, not knowing what to do or say. She was his friend, too.
And the boyfriend. He got caught up in it and they took him as well. His life meant nothing to them.
‘Who was driving?’ I say, and at first Saul does not hear me. I have to repeat the question, my voice louder.
‘Who was driving?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replies, and he uses this as an opportunity to come towards me, out on to the drive. ‘It was Hesther who telephoned. She had to tell her parents. That’s where she was calling from. Said they were at a party or something. Coming back. That’s all she said.’
‘No other cars? No drunk driver or…’
‘Alec, I don’t know. She didn’t say. Do you want to go back to London? What do you want to do?’
When you are with somebody, when you love them, you think about their loss, what it would mean to suffer their dying. I thought of this always with Kate: illness, accident - even a car crash. Her going off on a journey and simply never coming home. And I was aware that these fears contained an element of expectation, perhaps even of hope that something might happen to her. Why? Because that would make people sympathetic towards me; it would give my life a certain drama. To lose your first love. It had the character of tragedy.
There is nothing of that now. Only the hideous noise of impact, an inhuman sound. And Kate’s eyes at this moment. I see Kate’s eyes.
How did they do it? Brakes? Tyres? Were they forced off the road? What person has it in them to order the deaths of two young people?
‘What happened?’ I ask Saul. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I really