Chapter Thirty Six

Later that afternoon Sorcha was restless and frustrated, stranded in Jake’s flat. She had offered to stay while he spoke to his mother and then tried to get the police to treat what he had to say as urgent, and had meant it when she had made the offer, but they both knew that it made more sense for her to keep out of it as far as she could. Somehow, in the middle of the dust and the darkness, he had plugged back into the almost cosmic fund of calmness which acted as his comfort blanket in times of trouble. She didn’t need to worry about him, so she had to worry about the fact that she didn’t know what was happening instead.

She had tried to read, and tried to watch TV, but found herself checking the time every three or four minutes. Eventually she found a pad of paper in one of the drawers in the kitchen, and sat down to make notes of what they knew and what they didn’t know in the hope that it would at least make the time pass more quickly. The fact that she knew that she was essentially trying to trick herself meant that it took a while before it worked, but she did eventually get properly absorbed in it. Having got to the end of what she knew, she managed to get a Wi-Fi connection on her laptop, and started trawling the internet for more information about Marty and Stephen Warren.

When her phone went, she almost didn’t hear it. She’d left it in her jacket pocket, and then left the jacket in the hallway when she had come back in, because the heating was on and the flat was only just sub-tropical. She managed to get to it just before it diverted to voicemail: although when she saw that it was Jane she felt a sudden surge of guilt, which brought with it a rather childish urge to hang up.

“I’m so, so sorry, Sweets. I know I should have called, it’s just been a bit of a rollercoaster week.”

“Never mind that. Where the hell are you?”

Jane was very close to screaming down the phone at her, and wasn’t wholly sure that that she had managed to communicate just how loudly she wanted to scream. Sorcha knew it was bad, but wasn’t quite sure how bad, and was also not ready to sit and listen to a well-intended rant about poor feeble little pop stars.

“I’m fine, hun. It’s just been a bit of an odd week and I can’t really talk about it now. I’ll tell you about it next time you’re over.” Sorcha knew that probably wasn’t good enough. “It’ll be worth the wait, I promise. I reckon it’ll take us several bottles of wine. Each.”

“If you’re with Norman, I’m going to kill you the next time I see you. I wouldn’t even feel guilty - it would be a freaking mercy killing.” Sorcha could feel Jane fizzing, and wasn’t quite sure how to manage her: it didn’t help that the mention of Norman left her feeling utterly confused.

“God no, Pet. To the best of my knowledge he’s several hundred miles away from me at the moment. The only time I’ve seen him this week is in the office.” She was struggling to remember where the conversation with Jane had been left, “I’ve learned the Norman lesson, I promise. It wasn’t fun, but it is over.”

Jane was listening for clues in Sorcha’s voice, and getting frustrated with the quality of the line.

“You expect me to believe you, when you’re still going to be working with him most days and some nights?”

Sorcha hadn’t thought of it quite like that. It was a fairly significant addition to the list of things which she suddenly didn’t like very much about her job.

“I expect you to believe me, but I still haven’t quite figured out the work thing, to be honest. But I promise you Norman is no more, in the extra-curricular sense.”

Despite the intermittent echoes and buzzing on the line, Jane could hear that Sorcha sounded very different from the way she had been a week earlier, but she wasn’t convinced that was necessarily a good thing.

“I’ll believe that when it happens. But where the hell are you then, if you’re not with him?”

Sorcha stood her ground

“I’m not in London: I fancied a bit of a change of scene and something came up. It’s just a bit complicated, and I can’t really say much about it at the moment.” She knew that was likely to rile Jane, and decided that it was probably kinder to imply an untruth: Jane was at least used to the fact that she often couldn’t discuss work things with her, and used to the fact that work didn’t stop just because it was the weekend, “You know how it is with me sometimes, Pet.”

Jane paused: Sorcha couldn’t tell whether it was because she was pondering her next attack, or because she had bent down to pick up her cat or got distracted putting the kettle on.

“When are you going to be back in London, then?”

“Hopefully tonight, but it’s looking like it’s going to be a late one. I have to wait for someone to come back before I can leave.”

“Bugger. I was hoping I could persuade you to go and see Pip this evening and check that she’s OK. Have you seen her lately?”

“No,” Although they had been texting and e-mailing a lot, and occasionally spoke on the phone, Sorcha realised with a jolt that the last time she had seen Pip was in the hospital after Stephen Warren’s attack on Jake, “I actually don’t think I’ve seen her for months, although we’re in touch most days. Why, what’s up?”

“I’m not sure, but I had a really weird call from her yesterday, and now I can’t get hold of her at all.”

Sorcha felt a bit guilty, but couldn’t see that there was much she could do.

“She’ll be all right – you know what she’s like. I’ll give her a call later in the week, and maybe see if we can meet up next weekend.”

They chatted for a while, mostly about what Jane had been up to. She was organising a charity ball for a local opera society, and was struggling with a couple of very elderly, wealthy women on the ball committee who had very structured notions of philanthropic etiquette. Sorcha had never quite understood why Jane bothered with it: it was one of the things about her which always struck her as foreign, but it kept the minutes ticking over.

Jane had eventually run out vitriol and frustration, and was threatening to go for a walk in the woods near to where she lived, looking for chipmunks. Sorcha wasn’t quite ready to let her go.

“Janey, do you know anyone who’s actually read Kant? I mean really sat down and read it all from beginning to end?”

Jane squinted at the phone, unsure of the question. It sounded like a trick.

“Yes. Why?”

Sorcha was confused by the clarity of her answer, and frustrated at the same time.

“Oh come off it! Who the hell do you know who would do a thing like that? I’m talking about really reading it rather than just skimming a few pages and spouting crap about it.”

Jane was now convinced that it was a trick, but had no idea why Sorcha was doing it, and wasn’t really in the mood.

“John. Your John. His thesis was something to do with Kant and morality, wasn’t it?” She paused, remembering back, “I’m pretty sure he read absolutely all of it, every last comma, and probably even compared typos in different editions. I guess he never really used to talk to you about that kind of thing, did he?”

Sorcha shivered involuntarily, and felt as if she had been unfairly caught out. John was certainly not a topic of conversation she was in the mood for, though, so she fell silent; and Jane was left staring at the phone, confused.

“Any other random questions you want to ask that you already know the answer to?”

Sorcha still didn’t answer. She was fighting a sudden urge to start a discussion about which of Elizabeth and Darcy had been proud, and which of them had been prejudiced; which distracted her even more when she realised that she wasn’t wholly sure that she did know the answer after all.