The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,101

clerk.

He nodded.

Two days passed. The two slowest days of his life. Minutes felt like weeks; hours like months. He tried to occupy himself. He smoked, he played computer games, he even tried to masturbate, but he felt no desire, had no feeling down there, as if all the nerve endings had shrivelled and died. He exercised endlessly. He drank coffee. He tried to eat but he wasn’t hungry. He felt too sick; there was no saliva in his mouth. He paced up and down.

He checked his emails. There was a message from Paul. He was still in Ibiza, but he had dumped the American and moved on to a local girl. She was beautiful, he said. He might stay in Ibiza for a while longer. He said he hoped everything was OK with him and Kirsty, that he was looking forward to seeing the baby when he got back and that he gladly offered his services as a godfather. He ended the message by saying, If you see Chris and Lucy, say hi to them from me.

Jamie turned the computer off without replying to the message. He unplugged it from the wall.

‘You are so wrong about them, Paul,’ he said to himself. ‘How could you be so wrong?’ It actually scared him – that his best friend didn’t believe what he said about Lucy and Chris. Nobody ever believed him – not Paul, not the police. In fact, the only person who had believed him was Mike: who he had just betrayed.

It was such a mess.

But it would all be sorted out soon.

He picked up the money – 500 £20 notes, bundled together with elastic bands. Somehow he had expected £10,000 to look a lot more substantial. He held the money in his hands and thought about what he could do with it. He could go on a long holiday; maybe go to see Paul in Ibiza, live out there for while. He could live on the money for a few months, pay the bills. He could put it towards moving.

But no, this money was meant for one thing only.

He drove to the East End, parked in a side street off Mile End Road and walked down the road towards the stadium. The sky was slate grey and drizzling rain soaked his face and hair and clothes. He had the money in a carrier bag in his inside coat pocket. His hands were so cold he couldn’t feel his fingers. He shoved them into his pockets, but it didn’t help much.

He passed a group of teenagers in designer sports wear. One of the boys bumped into him, and he grabbed at the money, paranoid that he was going to be mugged. A look of fear passed across the boy’s face. Jamie was confused. Why did the boy look frightened? He stopped and looked at himself in the side mirror of a parked car. His eyes looked wild; he was gaunt, his cheeks hollow, his lips bruised where he kept biting them. No wonder the teenager had looked so afraid. He must have thought Jamie was a lunatic, or a junkie. Somebody unstable and dangerous: a volcano ready to blow.

Minutes later, he found himself standing on the spot that the man had specified, behind the stadium. There was nobody around; the rain made sure of that. He looked at his watch. Ten to one. He had time for a cigarette.

As he crushed the cigarette out under his boot, he spotted a small girl of about seven or eight coming towards him from the direction of the main road. She was walking straight towards him. But where the hell was the courier? He didn’t want to be pestered by a little kid.

The girl walked right up to him. ‘Neighbour,’ she said. She was tiny, her face pinched and waxen like she’d never really breathed fresh air, like a miniature OAP.

He looked at her, surprised. She held out her hand. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

Jamie reached into his pocket and pulled out the carrier bag containing the bundle of money. All his savings. All his and Kirsty’s savings. He had a sudden glimpse of the absurdity of what he was doing: handing all this money over to a little girl to pass on to two men he had never even met, one of whom might or might not be called Charlie. But what choice did he have? He had to deal with Lucy and Chris. He gritted his teeth