Читать книгу Ravenfall - Narrelle M Harris - Страница 8

Gabriel lay awake in his bed, facts tumbling over and over in his head without making the slightest bit of sense. Ben Tiller had gone missing; so had Alicia Jarret. Both of them were old hands on the streets.

The last he’d heard, Alicia had found a bed in a proper shelter, and now pfft. Gone. Ben had been doing better, too. His brother, Ethan, had been in touch and while Ben hadn’t been comfortable trying to stay in the small, neat suburban house with Ethan and Ethan’s girlfriend Jess, they’d connected. They were trying. And now Ben was missing too.

People vanished on the streets all the time, Gabriel was only too aware. Even people who were making progress. But people usually turned up again: sometimes dead of an overdose under a bridge, true, but Alicia was a drunk, not a user.

Ben might have succumbed, but none of Gabriel’s contacts knew of anyone who Ben – who was acutely paranoid – trusted enough to buy from while his semi-regular supplier was in stir. It was the absence of a source Ben didn’t think was trying to poison him (well, for certain values of poisoning) that had cleaned him up enough to allow the rapprochement with Ethan.

Gabriel’s phone rang out with the first few lines of the Mikado’s song from Gilbert and Sullivan. Michael. Two o’clock in the morning and Michael thought nothing of calling him. As always, an irritating warmth fluttered underneath the more usual testiness that he was calling at all.

Gabriel held the phone to his ear. ‘Piss off.’

‘Ah, Gabriel,’ came the unruffled reply. ‘It is always so refreshing to see that the passage of years that in others heralds maturity finds you as juvenile as ever.’

‘Michael, it’s so delightful to find that, as always, you’re cementing your routine as a pompous octogenarian only four decades in advance of the need. Did the foreign office send you on a special course for that, or are you accepting tutelage in Old Fartdom direct from the Chancellor of the Exchequer?’

‘I’m not with the foreign office, or the Exchequer, as you well know.’

Talking to his brother, Gabriel fell naturally back into the rhythms and vocabulary of his upbringing. ‘No. You skulk around the halls of power in Westminster with the face of a lugubrious turtle and offer a word in season to anyone who looks lost and in need of counsel, which is almost all of those tossers. What is it you do again? No wait. I remember. The secretary to the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office. It was that or the tea lady.’

‘Gabriel–’

‘Is there an opening for the undersecretary to the secretary of the permanent secretary, or do you just want someone to help you hand out the biscuits? Because you’ll find that, as always, my answer is sod off. Would you like me to help you spell that for your diary?’

‘Grow up, Gabriel,’ snapped Michael Dare.

‘And get old before my time like you did? You’re 40, Michael, not 60.’

‘And you’re 27, not a teenager. Don’t you think it’s time you got a proper job.’

‘No, I don’t. I need to make my rent and pay for groceries and all those getting-by things that I’ve been doing for years without you and without our father. I know it pisses you both off, but what can you do?’

‘Are you quite finished?’

‘Just about. I want to remind you that I have a job at Wilcott’s Art Supplies and my paintings do sell. Don’t fall off your chair.’

‘Marvellous. Before you rally for your final bout of infantile banter, I wanted to let you know that your mother sent a postcard today from Santiago. She sends her love.’

‘And you had to let me know this in the middle of the night.’

‘First chance I’ve had to call,’ said Michael. ‘And I knew you’d be up.’

‘How?’

‘You’re an artiste,’ said Michael, and Gabriel could hear the sardonic humour in it. ‘You keep the hours of a trollop.’

Gabriel smirked, working hard to make sure his much older brother didn’t hear his smothered laugh. ‘Thanks for the Maternal Update, Michael. You can tell her I’m not dead and thanks for asking.’

‘I’ll be sure to do so.’

‘I know she didn’t ask,’ Gabriel went on softly. ‘She never does. And I know she didn’t send me a postcard. But thanks for pretending.’

Gabriel heard Michael sigh.

‘I’ve a roof over my head,’ said Gabriel firmly. ‘I’m housed and fed, I have a part time job, and my paintings are selling. You don’t have to worry about me. And I know the old man didn’t ask either, but if he does, which he won’t, I’m fine.’

‘You won’t reconsider the job offer?’ Michael asked. ‘I could use some help distributing the biscuits.’

Gabriel let his brother hear the laugh this time. ‘The civil service would drive me spare. I lack civility.’

‘I noticed.’

‘See you around, Michael.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

Gabriel rang off and put the phone back on the bedside table, allowing a grudging fondness for his brother to taint his thoughts. Michael was a self-important gasbag who would have been happier hobnobbing with Disraeli and Gladstone, but for all his sins, he wasn’t a complete twat. Not like their father, who was as complete a twat as nature and disposition could make him.

Gabriel had once tried feeling sorry for his father, but it hadn’t stuck. It must have been hard, the old bastard’s first wife running off with the accountant and leaving him with a solemn seven year old to raise – a task he outsourced to boarding schools and home tutors. The next wife hadn’t even waited to find someone to run off with. She packed her bags when Gabriel was four and, apart from the occasional Christmas and birthday card, never looked back.

Gabriel had been raised, like his half-brother before him, by a succession of nannies to begin with, and then by schoolmasters and tutors – and, thank heavens, by his wonderful Helene Dupre.

Having actually met his father, Gabriel didn’t blame anyone for taking the first available escape route. He was less forgiving of his mother for not taking him with her, but screw it. She was as much a stranger to him as his father, and it didn’t matter, even though Michael thought it did. Michael thought a lot of things that weren’t true.

Like the fact Michael thought Gabriel was childish for turning his back on their father’s money, and on a high-paying job in the city or the government. Michael had more than once expressed the opinion that they should get something from their connection, even if was just a roof and an education. He thought Gabriel an idiot for choosing to sleep on the streets sometimes rather than accept a penny from their father, and for pursuing art after spending all that time gaining a chemistry degree. As though defiance was the only reason for either.

Irritated again, Gabriel shoved the blankets aside and swung his feet onto the floor. He took a deep breath and listened.

Yes. There it was. The soft, pacing footstep of James in his own room, sleepless as ever.

Gabriel was shuffling, bleary-eyed, to the kitchen in the morning when he caught sight of James darting out of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his hips, moisture dewed in the hollow of his spine and on the tips of his short brown hair. The caduceus tattoo, which he’d glimpsed on their first meeting, was strikingly dark against James’s pale skin, the central staff and wings tinted golden, one snake in solid black while its twin was a bold outline. Three red poppies were entwined around the foot of the staff.

More compelling than the tattoo was the way the towel clung to James’s waist, thighs and the shape of his arse which, Gabriel noted, continued to be fabulous.

Gabriel cleared his throat, as though that would clear the sudden desire from his system. ‘Tea?’ he asked, voice rough from lack of sleep.

James turned, revealing the firm musculature and fine swirls of hair of his chest and abdomen, the solid strength in his biceps and shoulders. Gabriel’s mouth was instantly dry, and he couldn’t stop staring. God.

‘Sure,’ said James carefully, averting his face from Gabriel’s avid gaze. He hurried into his bedroom.

‘Yes. Good.’ Gabriel unfroze and turned back to the kitchen.

Don’t be the creepy flatmate, Gabriel told himself sternly. He’s not interested. Stop staring. You moron.

Except that Gabriel was pretty certain that James was interested, though better at disguising it. He’d seen the flicker of James’s gaze taking in Gabriel’s low-slung pyjama pants and the bare chest of his slender, wiry physique.

Or maybe, Gabriel thought, James really was straight after all. He’d looked away quickly enough. Gabriel wouldn’t have put money on it though. Perhaps it was simply the fact that tall, skinny, bony, weird gits with too-intense eyes and hair that wouldn’t stay bloody combed were not James’s cup of tea, romantically speaking.

Hell, Gabriel wasn’t anyone’s cup of tea, in Gabriel’s experience. Not for longer than a few months, at any rate. By then the novelty of the weird-artist-boyfriend had worn off and it was all, can’t you be more normal? Why can’t you get a proper job with that degree of yours? And for god’s sake, stop letting those people into my house.

Gabriel generally didn’t much like other people after a few months either. Most of them he started to dislike after a week. A day. Selfish, narrow-minded, judgemental pricks. They all wanted something without having to give anything back. Some badly judged boyfriends had decided that if Gabriel couldn’t afford the rent on a regular basis, he could pay in other ways, by spreading his legs and shutting the fuck up about what he did and didn’t like that way. The streets were definitely better than that.

Gabriel liked James, though. James laughed at Gabriel’s black jokes, and made more than a few of his own. He didn’t mind that Gabriel was odd in his hours and habits, any more than Gabriel minded James being a bit odd in turn. James never asked Gabriel to justify himself, or made obnoxious comments about his visitors. James would never try to bully him into doing things he didn’t want to do.

James, thought Gabriel with exasperation, was bloody lovely, and not bloody interested, and that was bloody that.

That seemed to become even more unequivocally that the following evening, after both men had put in a day’s solid work at their respective part-time jobs. James dashed in the door from the clinic and changed into a fresh shirt and a pair of clean jeans that clung very nicely to his thighs and backside. Gabriel had to make a point of staring fixedly at his sketch book instead of at James’s arse.

‘I’m off,’ said James, dashing for the door again. ‘Date.’

He was dressed nicely, but not too nicely. Dark slacks, a checked button-up, a navy and beige plaid blazer. Like all of James’s clothes, the outfit was well worn but also well cared for, and he looked good in it.

He looks good in everything, while I... Gabriel fiddled with the hem of one of his usual novelty T-shirts. His battered leather jacket – an Oxfam shop bargain from his university days – was slung over the back of a kitchen chair. What a style icon. Michael’s right. I’m a juvenile delinquent.

‘Do I know him?’

‘Sharee, from the clinic.’

‘The neonatal nurse?’

‘That’s her.’

‘Oh.’ Gabriel was on the back foot for the accumulating reasons of: he’s dating; a woman; definitely not me. ‘Have a good time.’ Gabriel tried to be neutral but he thought he mostly sounded snarky.

‘We’ll see,’ James said, as though it were a dangerous mistake to get his hopes up. ‘Are you painting tonight?’

Gabriel glanced at his sketchbook. He appeared to have drawn the curves and planes of James’s shapely legs and rear. ‘Possibly.’

‘If you want someone to have a wee peek and cheer you on, I’ll be free later.’

‘That’s pessimistic of you, isn’t it?’

James paused at the door. ‘Or… not, then.’

Gabriel waved him on, pretending nonchalance. ‘Whatever.’

James departed. Gabriel went to his room to paint. He stared at the canvas for half an hour before giving up and pulling out his sketchbook again, where he drew a picture of James’s face, with its broad forehead, strong jaw and small chin; the quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth; and the shadowy sadness in his kind eyes.

Gabriel feathered his fingers over the latter. That happened sometimes. His pencils and paints captured things he hadn’t meant to draw. Certainly, James never meant for him to see that expression.

The click of the front door opening and James’s soft footfall drew Gabriel away from contemplating the sketch. He glanced at his watch. Not yet 10 pm. Not a successful date, then.

Gabriel put the sketchpad underneath a used palette and emerged from his room.

‘James?’

The doctor was standing by an open cupboard, staring blankly inside.

‘Are you all right?’

James sighed. ‘Yeah, aye. Sharee had to go home to her kid.’

Gabriel considered the comment. ‘Did you know she had a kid before you asked her out?’

‘Aye. Julian. He’s a sweet lad, only six. He likes Lady Gaga and newts. Sharee got a text saying the babysitter was sick.’ It was clear James didn’t believe a word of it and couldn’t be bothered to try.

‘I take it she didn’t rain check.’

James turned to lean against the counter but he didn’t meet Gabriel’s sympathetic gaze. ‘I don’t think I’m her type.’

Gabriel’s mouth twitched in disdain at Sharee’s lack of good taste. He was on the verge of saying something incredibly stupid like You could be my type, if you like and instead said a different stupid thing. ‘Plenty more fish, and all that.’

‘Fish,’ deadpanned James.

‘Sure,’ said Gabriel. ‘Or. You know. Some other aquatic analogy to dating the fickle and clearly deranged.’

That smile pulled at the corner of James’s mouth. ‘Fickle and deranged now, is she?’

‘Well, obviously. What with you being a doctor and ex-army to boot. You have that nice balance of caring and tough, like in those action films with Bruce Willis.’

‘The PTSD is just a bonus?’

‘Some women love a reclamation project.’

Gabriel thought for a minute he’d pushed it too far, but James laughed. ‘Aye, I’m a real fixer-upper.’

‘Good basic frame, though,’ Gabriel said, grinning, ‘And the garden’s nice.’

‘What does that even mean?’ demanded James, merriment bubbling up.

‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ admitted Gabriel, laughing with him, ‘But I suppose the next tortured analogy should relate to a splash of paint.’

‘Well, you’re the man for that.’ James’s smile faded. ‘I guess… bed for me then. See you in the morning.’

‘Goodnight. I’m expecting a visitor tonight, by the way. I’ll go downstairs to see her. You sleep well.’

James, on his way to his room, hesitated. ‘You too.’

Gabriel flicked the kettle on and stared at it, proving that contrary to old wives’ tales, the damned things would boil while watched. He put a teabag in the cup, then thought better of it and prepared a plunger of coffee. He took the coffee to his room and waited by the window.

Hannah whistled up to him after midnight. Gabriel whistled softly back down, then made his way out of the flat and to the garden in the dark, pulling on his jacket to keep out the chill.

‘Hannah. Thank you.’

‘Don’ thank me Gaby. Ain’t told you nuffin’ yet.’

‘Thanks for coming, anyway,’ he said. He placed a hand carefully over hers, moving slowly so that she could see the gesture coming.

Moving equally slowly, Hannah patted his fingers. ‘That Daryl Mulloway what dosses under Chelsea Bridge.’

‘I know him.’

‘He reckons he seen Alicia last week, down the river tunnel, what the Westbourne comes out of in the Thames. He’s a liar, but.’

Mulloway was rarely sober, so it was a question of whether he was a liar or just addled.

‘Thanks, Hannah. I’ll go speak to him.’

‘He’s a liar an’ he pinches stuff,’ Hannah said darkly. She tilted her head to one side to regard him critically. ‘You done a paintin’ of me, dincha?’

‘I did. Thank you so much for letting me do that.’

‘Dja sell it yet, Gaby?’

‘Helene’s got it in the gallery. She says someone made an offer.’

‘You paid me twenny. You promised me a hundred.’

‘I’ve got it here.’ Gabriel drew an envelope from his pocket, but she patted his fingers to halt him.

‘Nah. Hang on to it, Gaby. I just git robbed if I got it wiv me. Just gimme anuvver twenny for now.’

Gabriel opened the envelope containing four twenty pound notes, and drew one out for her. Hannah snatched it up and stuffed it down the front of her grimy clothes.

‘Daryl,’ she said, returning to the previous topic, ‘He reckoned he saw our Benny too. Not at the river, but. He don’ remember where, he reckons. Liar. Cos he said he’d tell me tomorrer.’

Hannah fell suddenly silent as the back door opened and a bar of light spilled into the garden. She jerked away from the light as Gabriel turned.

James popped his head out of the gap, then hovered uncertainly by the door.

‘I know you’re busy,’ he said quietly into the garden, ‘But I thought you might…’ He blinked at Hannah, who glared at him with suspicion. ‘Sandwich?’ he asked, and offered the plate that he held in one hand.

Gabriel stared from the plate of sandwiches, to Hannah’s troubled frown, to James’s hesitant expression.

‘I’d love one,’ he said. James approached them, not seeming to notice the coolness of the night in just a khaki tee. Gabriel took a sandwich and bit into it. Ham, cheese and pickle. Nothing fancy, but it was fresh and tasty. ‘Here.’ He offered one to Hannah, who was always too thin, and after she watched him take a second bite, she shoved half a sandwich into her mouth.

‘Beer too, if you like,’ offered James in a voice so carefully neutral that Gabriel knew that the doctor was deeply unsure of his welcome. ‘Or we’ve got… uh…’

‘I’ll take the beer.’ Gabriel took the two bottles, noticing that there wasn’t a third.

‘That’s me off, then,’ said James, handing the sandwiches to Gabriel. ‘Night.’

‘Night,’ said Hannah around a mouthful of food, which she washed down with a posh German beer.

Gabriel watched her eat most of the sandwiches – from his own kitchen supplies, since James never had anything in the cupboard except tea – and gave her the rest of his beer as they talked about Daryl and the things he said he saw.

‘Be careful, Hannah,’ said Gabriel at the end, when Hannah had wound down to mumbling. ‘If you could come to me after you talk to Mulloway, I’d like that.’

Hannah gave him the side-eye. ‘Get your boyfriend to make more sammiches,’ she said.

‘He’s not my–’

But she’d gone.