Kevin knew Toby didn’t really want to know but schoolboy manners ensnared him as efficiently as a fisherman’s net. He put on the brakes and fell in step.
“Good, good,” he said. “You? Business going well?”
It was what blokes of a certain class and age said to one another when there was nothing to say. Younger men would talk about football or sex. Older men: knee joints or dogs fouling the pavements.
“Yeah, all good, thanks. You?”
Kevin suddenly felt exhausted with the effort of this pointless fake banter and sank down on a bench. “Actually, I’m in a terrible mess,” he said, burying his head in his beautifully manicured hands.
Toby slumped down beside him. “Same.”
“Finances?” Kevin muttered.
“Yes. I’m in the shit. You?”
“Same. In a bit over my head, if I’m honest.”
“Oh, God, so am I,” Toby blurted. “Saul and I are supposed to be flying to LA on Saturday to start a surrogate pregnancy. But I haven’t got the money. And I can’t tell him.”
“Christ!” Kevin pulled a sympathetic face. “Well, I suppose my baby is about to go down the plughole too. My project should have been home and dry by now. My investment was assured—the money was promised.”
“Me too,” Toby said.
Kevin looked at him. “Who did you invest with?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Toby muttered. “He’s gone missing.”
“Charlie,” Kevin whispered as if to himself, and Toby turned his head.
They’d looked at each other for a long time before Kevin told him about the passport.
Charlie looked up at Kevin now, eyes flicking from side to side, looking for escape.
“Look, I’m not a well man—I’m dying,” he croaked.
“We’re all dying.” Kevin pulled the shed door closed and rang Toby.
Forty-eight
SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2019
Four days earlier
Toby
Kevin told Toby to come straightaway.
“Why? What’s going on? What have you found?”
“The main prize. Just get here. And, Toby, don’t drive in. Put your car in the parking area down the road—there’s a gap in the hedge in the far corner. You can get to the back door of the house from there.”
Toby’s face was clenched into a rictus grin and his hands were clamped onto the steering wheel as he drove. This could be almost over, he told himself. Kevin had said it was the main prize. He couldn’t think further than that.
He shouldn’t have worn his good shoes. The path was dusty, and as he stumbled over the rocks and tussocks, dirt swirled up onto his cream trousers. He swept his hand over his trousers but doing so made them worse, rubbing the dirt deeper into the material. Saul would see. How was he going to explain?
Kevin’s face suddenly appeared at a window on the ground floor, and he pointed at a door farther along the fa?ade.
It creaked loudly as it opened and Toby looked round to see if anyone had heard. He could hear distant music—a radio? Pauline must have been just on the other side of the building and he held his breath.
He was in a dark corridor. “Kevin,” he called softly.
“Down here. Come to the end of the passage. We’re down the stairs.”
We. Had he found Charlie? Toby did an air pump in celebration and marched off to have it out with him.
He wasn’t sure what he’d thought he’d find, but not this.
It was a scene out of Reservoir Dogs. It was some sort of kitchen—there were two stone sinks and a drain in the middle of the floor. It stank.
And Charlie was sitting on a kitchen chair with an old tea towel stuffed in his mouth. He had his eyes shut. Toby could taste the fear in the room when he licked his lips.
“What the hell’s going on?” he blurted. “Why have you gagged Charlie?”
He lurched forward to pull the towel out but Kevin grabbed his arm.
“Hang on. He isn’t playing ball. He needs to know we mean business.”
Charlie looked at Toby, his eyes pleading with him.
“Business? What are you talking about?” Toby shouted. “We’re not mobsters.”
“Shut up, Toby.”
“Take that gag out or I’m leaving.”
Kevin leaned over and yanked the end of the towel, letting it unravel and fall from Charlie’s mouth into his lap.
Freed, Charlie coughed and choked, his face turning puce. When he quietened, he looked at Toby again. “Thank you, old man. Things have got a bit out of hand, haven’t they?”