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Forty

Thursday midnight

Charlie lay with his head on Tom’s shoulder and tried to explain the events of the last few days. It only just made sense to him, but some things began to resolve themselves as he put them into words. “Reason suggested that there was one villain behind the whole thing, and Andrew Dwyer seemed the obvious candidate,” he said.

“How come?” Tom asked.

“Well mainly because I already knew he was a gangster from what Unwin told me. Then he got his two thugs to kidnap me.”

“Not because he was a Trump supporter?” Tom sounded amused. “Because I have to say, that would have been at the top of my list.”

“Except they were all Trump supporters. All anti-gun control. Probably all homophobes. Sabrina had a thing about immigrants. But not every Trump supporter can be a criminal.”

Tom snorted. “All the ones you met were.”

“Small sample, but point taken.” Charlie closed his eyes and let his mind wander. “The thing is, I never had time to think, never mind sleep or eat properly. I do know that a diet of strong coffee and doughnuts isn’t optimal for thinking, but you know me and sugar. Sometimes it’s the only thing I can manage … I worried about you, all the time. To be accurate, panic is a better word than worry.” He snuggled into Tom and let the peace of his presence — alive and awake — soothe him. “And even when I did get a chance to eat or sit down for a minute, those FBI bastards came and pinched my clothes, or turned up at the flat to arrest me for something. I think the only time I sat down for more than a few minutes was in the cell at the police station. If that wasn’t enough, everything everyone told me was lies. Like everything. Except Kaylan’s girlfriend — and she repeated the lies Kaylan had told her.”

“Give me a for instance,” Tom asked.

“For instance, Brody Murphy said I had met Kaylan here in New York. That was the thing about Murphy. He could tell a lie like that and sound totally convinced. I wanted to trust him, but …”

“The reason I know you didn’t meet Kaylan,” Tom said, “is because I told him to get lost.”

Charlie pushed himself up on his elbow. “ You met Kaylan?”

“In that piano bar we went in. The one in Greenwich Village. I was there first because you’d stopped for something. Probably doughnuts. Or did your mother ring? I can’t remember. Kaylan came in and said he wanted to talk to you. He’d recognised me and assumed I would know where you were. I told him to fuck off. We were on holiday, and the last thing we needed was reminding about the crap from last year. I got rid of him and never told you. The thing is, he said he thought his mother was trying to kill him.”

“What?”

“He thought his mother was trying to kill him. Which I realise now would have been useful information.”

“Sure it would. If we’d had a crystal ball to go with it. Which we didn’t. He was right though. Sabrina Sully killed Kaylan and two other people. She almost certainly killed her husband. She said she was sorry she hadn’t added me to the list.”

The bed was far too small for both of them, but no way was Charlie moving. Talking to Tom like this was undoing all the tangles in both his mind and body. He stretched out his legs, trying to move closer. Tom smelled different, Old Spice replaced with the scent of disinfectant, but he was till Tom, and one day soon they would go home, and all this would be over …

“So, this Andrew Dwyer character, he wasn’t the villain after all?” Tom asked.

Charlie gathered his wandering thoughts. “He’s certainly a villain. He kidnapped me for a start. But, see, like I said, everyone was lying to me. Brody Murphy let me think he was after Dwyer, when I suspect he really wanted Mead and Bart.”

“Back up a bit. Remind me who Mead and Bart are. Remember, I was unconscious while all this was happening.”

“Special Agent Mead and Special Agent Bart. They came to the flat after the shooting and said they were from the FBI hate crime team. They wanted us to think that the shooting was directed at Orianna and her poetry reading. Except when I looked them up, they were FBI, just cybercrimes not hate crimes.”

“And your nasty suspicious mind immediately thought cybercrimes must mean Kaylan Sully, hacker extraordinaire?”

“’Xactly. I even wondered if the FBI had found out what a monster Kaylan was and shot him themselves. But I figured they were the FBI and probably didn’t go round shooting innocent people attending a poetry reading, just to get rid of one psychopath. But Mead and Bart didn’t want anyone looking at Kaylan as the main victim, and everything they did was designed to divert attention away from him.”

“I’m guessing it didn’t work for you?”

“Not even a bit. They wanted it all tidied away as a hate crime shooting, thoughts and prayers, too bad, so sad. Then if that didn’t work, they wanted me out of the way because I wouldn’t let it go.”

Tom laughed. “Hard to believe.” He poked Charlie very gently in the ribs, and then kissed him. “I dreamed about you,” he said. “I think they gave me drugs that you probably shouldn’t take for too long, but I dreamed all the time, and you were always there in my dreams.” He swallowed, and Charlie saw Tom’s eyes shining with unshed tears. “There was a bit… where I was, I don’t know, kind of dreaming and floating, and it was as if I was underwater. I could see the surface, and hear people calling me to wake up. Pass me a tissue.”

Charlie didn’t think he’d seen Tom cry, not like this. “Don’t tell me if you don’t want to, lovey.”

Tom blew his nose, one handed, then took a shuddery breath. “No. I want to. I kept listening for your voice, and then I remembered the bookshop and the shooting, and I thought maybe you weren’t calling me because you were dead, and I didn’t want to …”

Charlie stroked Tom’s hair and hugged him as hard as the bed and the tubes permitted. The story of what happened could wait.