Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [88]
‘You look the same, the hair and eyes. Same height and build. Strange life being a professional fake. With no talent? Billy has more in his little toe than you have in your entire body. He’s special. You’re not.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion.’
‘That’s millions of record sales, awards, more money than you could ever count, girls fainting when they see you. Or does that happen when you pop to the corner shop for a bottle of milk?’
‘I’ve been chased before.’
‘No you haven’t. Billy K has.’
For the first time Mathew Quail has taken his eyes from mine. He’s diminishing in the seat, smaller by the second.
‘Don’t be too disheartened.’ I say this with the tone of a concerned, but lecturing father. ‘It wasn’t Billy K that kept one step ahead of me for two continents. It was you. Well done. I’ll give you credit for that.’
He’s looking at the door. He’s not tied or bound. I don’t have him at gunpoint. ‘You’ve got no right to keep me here.’ He knocks the chair over as he stands. ‘I’m fucking out of here.’
I let him run. I walk calmly behind. He kicks at the door twice before I hook low and sharp under his bottom rib. Mathew groans, all the air in his lungs expelled. He crumples, shrinks to the floor like a burst balloon. I haul him back to the chair by his shoulders and set him back upon it.
‘Stop crying. You’re just winded.’ I was right about tears if I hit him. ‘I need answers before you can leave.’ He’s snivelling, crying like a toddler, not a 23-year-old. ‘How about I talk while you get your breath back? All you have to do is listen, then you can decide if you want to say the right thing and leave, or whether we stay here.’ I go on a knee before him. Even crouched like this I seem bigger than my prisoner, slumped and sniffing, crying into his sleeve. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Mathew. But I’ve gambled everything to find Billy K, whether he’s dead or alive. From Sydney to West London, each step you’ve taken I have too, each turn on the trail I’ve been your shadow.’
Mathew sits straighter. ‘I won’t get the money if I tell you.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘I can’t.’
‘OK. Let’s do this a different way.’ I rise from my knee.
Mathew screams, ‘Beat me up! Break my legs! I don’t fucking care. I’ll be rich and you’ll be in prison.’ He’s actually frothing at the mouth as he shouts.
‘Calm down. No need to get so excited. You should listen first. I’ll keep it really simple. Listen, because your life depends on it. Yesterday I met a man with a gun. And some bullets. One of them had my name on. The other yours.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Bullshit? Well, I’m here because he’s not. And if he was here, all you’d get is a hole in the head.’
‘You’ve been watching too much TV.’
‘You little twat.’ I reach out and grab the scruff of his neck. I have his shirt bunched in my fist. ‘You’d already be dead if I hadn’t got to him first. Dead. Not fucking here. Do you fucking understand or not?’ I drag him off the chair. I pull him across the floorboards into the kitchen.
‘What do you see? What the fuck do you see?’ I’m pointing at a spot on the dirty lino. He’s confused, terrified. ‘What do you see?’ I’m not shouting any more.
He says, ‘Nothing.’
I let him go. Then I slump against the wall, drained, bereft at the memory of my mother in that very spot. ‘Be good,’ her very last breath.
Mathew hyperventilates as he talks. ‘Wise wouldn’t hurt me. We had a deal.’
‘Well, he made a new one.’
‘To kill me? I said I wouldn’t say anything.’
‘Say what?’ I ask.
He looks up, decides I’m either too far gone to bullshit, or that the truth has become a burden for his narrow shoulders. ‘Keep Billy K alive. Keep his fans hoping. Wise set me up with the flights and fake ID. All I had to do was go out to Australia, track down the letter, you know, investigate as if I were Billy K.’
‘You stole the letter from Monique.’ He nods. ‘You have it now?’
‘I was going to give it to Wise.’ He reaches into his jacket pocket and I tell him to move slowly. He hands over the crum pled pages, a barely legible