Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [84]
I already had what I wanted from my assassin’s glovebox, the meeting place and time, a rendezvous with the man I’ve chased across deserts and slums, through my own memories of escape.
I’d screamed in his face, ‘Is it Billy K? Is it him?’
The only words he spoke were, ‘You’re a copper, Dent. We both know that. We both know that I’m saying fuck all. Prison is preferable to being shot by my employer.’
So I don’t know who was hired to kill me, and why the man I’ll meet tomorrow was also destined for a rented bullet. And whether, dare I even think it, he is Billy K.
But first, before the sun rises on a day with answers rather than questions, I drive, once again, to the coast to meet Anna.
Captain James Cook, at seventeen years of age, left his job as a grocer to work on a coal barge, to brave the crashing white surf of the North Sea, the waves and storms that for the previous eight months he’d watched tumble and foam into Staithes’ tiny harbour.
Walking the steep, cobbled lanes, to the small cottage, I think of Cook as a young man, what dreams he had of countries, whole continents, that were not yet lines on a map.
At the top of the steep lane I look down to the bay, the roofs of slate glinting, precious in the moonlight. The lights of the pub reflect on the wet sand. A car is negotiating the tight turns back up the hill, the headlights flaring off the windows.
Beyond this town of narrow alleys, the mouth of the bay, these sheer cliffs, Cook was called across the globe, again and again, returning from each voyage restless for more, as though the journey itself had become his home.
Inside the cottage I turn on the TV, too loud in the low- ceilinged room. I hit mute on the remote, and leave the sunny skies of a holiday show flickering across the screen. I walk into the bathroom and touch my hair and adjust my shirt collar then go back into the bedroom and open all the drawers and wardrobes, until I’m content at the emptiness. Then I turn off the TV and lie on the bed with my shoes still on. I have his gun by my side, a new clip loaded. Beyond the house, the sound of the North Sea could be warring armies, some epic battle forever raging.
I’m almost asleep when there’s a knock at the door. I jump up and smooth the bed before checking my face again in the mirror. Through the spyhole in the door, I can see her profile, looking down the cobbled and quiet lane. I put the gun in the dresser and take a breath. I open the door, and feel the volts prickling skin and bone. She says, ‘Jim, Jim.’ We stand for a moment, face to face, wordless, not yet touching. When the door is shut we kiss, and kiss, each enveloped by the other, a single being.
She stops and says, ‘I have something to tell you.’ I kiss her again. ‘Important,’ she says.
I only stop to say, ‘Not yet.’ I can taste her in my mouth as I speak.
She takes my hand and leads me to the centre of the room. I breathe in the scent on her neck and in her hair, loosened now, soft and free between my fingers.
Then she reaches behind my head and grips at the base of my skull, almost clawing, then a palm, opening, her fingertips drawing out behind my ear, slowly along the line of my jaw, before hooking her thumb into my mouth. Our eyes meet again, her pupils so dark and vital.
The room is bright and she says so. I switch out the light but the lamp still glares.
‘Wait,’ she says, and tells me to stand still. I ask her to keep the light on, I say I want to see her naked. She’s just beyond my reach, unbuttoning her shirt. I try to talk but have no words, captive to the act of her undressing. And she watches her own fingers pop each button, as though she too can’t look away. Down to the very last one. The shirt hangs from her shoulders, half opened, the contrast of her pale skin against a black bra.
She looks at me seriously now, then smiles, and tells me to take it off. Making that first step towards her,