Page 57 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Seems an odd turn of phrase,’ Flynn observed, groping one hand for his own mug.
‘Exactly. Dexter never said that. If he needed the loo he’d say something wonderfully poetic like “I want to piss”, or “gotta take a shit.” None of this “use the bathroom” nonsense. It’s been processing, all this time, in my head. Being blown up put it on the back burner a bit, but now I’m starting to wonder – did he cause that explosion to make sure I was out of the way so he could get into the flat? Was it the toilet he needed? Or the actualbathroom? Those books I was reading when I thought I really could be a private investigator told me that people tend to say what theyreallymean without knowing it.’
I gave Flynn another wild stare.
‘I’ll go and…’ He moved, but I put my tea-holding hand, the only working one, onto his shoulder to stop him. Tea slopped along his shirt but he didn’t remark on it.
‘No. I’m going to do this. I’ve got an idea.’ I put the tea down, just too late to save Flynn’s shirt, and began my lurch across the floor towards the bathroom door, gripping onto furniture on my way to help me stay upright, although the sheer fizz of adrenaline was almost propelling me towards the ceiling right now.
Flynn watched my progress. ‘Anything I can do?’
‘There’s a hammer in that drawer.’ I pointed with an elbow as my hand was holding on to the wall. ‘We might need it.’ Then the reality of what I needed to do crowded out the buzz of impetuosity. ‘And I might need to use you to do the actual mechanics.’
I received a bright smile and he went off to rummage in the Drawer of Stuff, as I continued my inching progress into the bathroom.
I switched on the light and stood and staredaround the dingy little room. At that moment, my downstairs neighbours slammed their front door and, obedient as ever to cheap landlord issues, the shower cubicle rocked. The sink was immaculate; Flynn must have cleaned in here, even the mirror had been wiped. And, thanks to my earlier mending activities, the floor no longer tipped and tilted as the loose boards moved.
The loose boards. Moved.
‘Quick, Flynn!’ My voice cracked under the weight of certainty.
‘Quick as I can! This drawer is a mess… Oh, here it is.’ A second later he appeared in the doorway, in time to see my unpicturesque descent to the floor. ‘Are you all right? Fee?’
‘No, no, that was intentional! Here.’ I rolled up the mat that, despite being little bigger than a bath towel, was large enough to cover most of the floor. ‘Can you lift up these two boards here?’
Flynn stared at me. ‘Seriously? We’re in the middle of all this and you want to do some home renovation work?’
I was out of breath. Getting myself down onto the floor without hitting my head on any of the fixtures had exhausted me. ‘Dexter. Bathroom. Loose floor,’ was all I could say and I saw the understanding come into his eyes.
‘You think…?’
‘Flynn, Iknow. Dexter’s never read a book in his life, he’s hardly going to have come over allCIA, is he? Do it.’
With some difficulty, because I’d nailed those boards down fairly securely in my earnest attempts to improve my surroundings, Flynn lifted the floor. Underneath was a small dark and dusty space. ‘Go on then,’ he said, sitting back onto his heels. ‘You check.’
Gritting my teeth and supporting my weight against the side of the shower, I reached my fingers into the gap. At first there was nothing, and my eyes pricked with dawning disappointment, buthalf a moment of groping more and I touched the edge of what I had known must be down there. There were two of them.
‘Twophones?’ Flynn wrestled with the hammer, clearly unsure as to what to do with it now. ‘Why would he have two phones?’
‘Two phones, hidden away in the flat of someone that wasn’t closely connected with him? He hardly took me out and showed me off, did he?’ I’d obviously read far more of the dodgy gangster end of the fiction market than Flynn had. But then his dad had probably had him studying marketing manuals as soon as he started phonics. ‘I think there will be a LOT of information that the police will be interested in on here.’ I shook the phones. ‘He’s probably got the squeaky-clean ones somewhere in Leeds for the police to find. These ones he kept here, nice and out of the way. He could take them whenever he wanted to and just pop them back, I wouldn’t notice.’
Flynn’s mouth twisted as though he were eating grapefruit. ‘What a… tosser.’
‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’ I straightened carefully, sweating and exhausted. ‘I think you’d better call the police, Flynn.’
21
‘The police will be here in ten minutes,’ Flynn said, sometime later. ‘I’m glad you made it back in here. It would have been an awkward interview, with you leaning against the bathroom wall.’
He hadn’t helped me. He had so clearly wanted to that I’d had to send him out to get some more biscuits.
‘I’m going to sit here and be all regal and imperious,’ I said, from the seat I’d finally reached. ‘Unless they’re going to arrest me, in which case they can carry me out in the chair.’
Flynn stopped, mid chew. ‘Arrest you? Why would they arrestyou? You didn’t set up the whole bomb thing, did you?’ Then, with narrowed eyes, ‘You didn’t, did you?’
I smiled at him and took the sandwich he’d made me in my wobbly right hand. My face was healing, the cheekbone mending and the stitches had come out, but whenever I smiled, I looked like a badly made-up extra fromNight of the Living Dead, so I tried not to do it too often.
I stayed, queenly and triumphant, in my chair, hoping that the smell of boiled cod wasn’t too noticeable to the sergeant andpolice constable who turned up later and sat drinking tea on the edge of the sofa, looking at me curiously.
