Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [85]
Now she breathes as measured and deep as a diver at sea, and I move and kiss her again, submerged too. Because nothing matters here, a haven of sheets and skin, sperm and sweat, that rhythm of sex for a stamp of being.
We lay in the starlight with the curtains open. The shadows of crossed window frames lay on the floor like targets. And into the bare room the expanding universe burns. Her body is luminous. I kiss from the small of her back, along the length of her spine to her hair, then down her shoulders. I’m afraid that when I run out of skin we’ll talk again of the hunt.
I say, ‘I love that sound.’
‘My beating heart?’
‘That too.’
‘You mean the sea on the beach.’
‘Things bigger than us, the moon swinging tides, stones rattled in the breaking waves.’
‘Bigger than one man chasing another?’
‘Or one man chasing himself.’
Now I’m naked, warm, in the arms of a woman who quivered with electricity, took me inside her and erased whatever the world wanted from a life, I want to stay a while feeling small, no challenge but one breath to the next.
She says we have to talk. ‘I have a confession.’
‘I forgive you already.’
‘Do you?’ She sighs, leans on her elbows and looks me hard in the eye. ‘Stolen Car. I took it from your desk. When Roberts turned over your house. From the first paragraph I knew it was you, fact not fiction. I slipped the manuscript into my bag.’
‘I wrote that behind bars. I was a teenager.’
‘I know. Young enough to have your record wiped and become a policeman. And I know about the car because you told me. I presumed that’s why you were sent to borstal.’
‘It was. Partly.’
‘And what happened with your stepfather?’
‘So I’m the one with the confession, not you.’
‘Look, Jim. This case is everything to you, and I have my theories on why it’s more than policing. It goes back to what happened to your mother. And your stepfather. You see Billy K as you abandoning your mother. And what happened to her is not your fault. You were a boy, Jim. He knocked her to the kitchen floor, not you.’
‘I know, believe me.’
Anna leans and kisses me on the forehead, light brushes of her lips.
I gently stop her and ask, ‘And this is the complete theory?’
‘Well, I also know how stubborn you are. But maybe I’m completely wrong on the reasons you’re obsessed with Billy K. Perhaps it’s just your professional ego, the man wanting to win, the result.’
‘Exactly. The result. Finding someone missing. And did you get hold of Robert’s phone?’
‘In my bag. Slipping into his office during the morning meeting was easy enough, had a slight panic sifting through his papers, then realised his member card was tucked into the bottom corner of the notice board. One swipe, then to your dodgy friends on Borough High Street to get it copied. You were right about the gym being quiet, just Roberts and another super beating a squash ball. Was in and out of his locker in less than sixty seconds, copying the SIM data with the adaptor. Now, Roberts did see me in the gym, but no reason for suspicion when I was pedalling away on a cycle machine.’
‘Special Agent Monroe.’
‘I was hoping you’d be impressed. But listen. This is more serious than you think.’
‘Well, it got pretty serious earlier.’
‘At the airport?’
‘Taken care of.’
‘Nothing happened did it?’
‘Something happened. Tell me about Roberts and his phone.’
‘God, Jim.’ She sighs. Maybe she wonders what she’s doing here in bed, how her life