Quid Pro Quo

Chapter Twenty Five

Martha returned to the farm with a large bottle of vodka, a litre of Jim Beam and a bumper pack of marshmallows.

In the meantime, Ty and I had constructed a roaring fire and the three of us sat around it with the logs spitting sparks through the dusk gloom like fireflies. Edge stripped the bark from some short branches with his ever-present knife so that we could use them to toast the marshmallows. I had two browning contentedly on a stick held over the heat with my left hand, while my right cradled a half-full mug of Jim. Every time I tipped the drink to my lips, the flames performed a reflected dance through the amber spirit; making me feel like I was holding an enamel goblet full of liquid fire.

We drank hard and long. Each of us remaining, for the most part, lost in our own thoughts.

I could never hold neat liquor, and rarely tried. But that night I felt something in me that needed quenching. It might have been my sense of loss for Sarah and my sister, both of whom had died so suddenly. It could have been the unsettling feeling of being cut adrift from my business and all ties to the past. Maybe it was confusion and uncertainty about events that were unfolding in connection to my time in Pebble Deeping.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, it was the woman who sat opposite me and stared through the firelight as if I wasn't there.

My money was on an accumulation of the lot; a full house, so to speak.

I find that booze and morose self-analysis regularly go hand in hand. I occasionally turned to drink to help me achieve one of those singular moments of mental clarity that only occur when excess consumption has swept away everyday brain clutter.

A housemate of mine from my time at university had called this a 'Beer Epiphany'; a blinding flash of insight into the mysteries and depths of the Cosmos which could profoundly alter the recipient.

A true beer epiphany was only found at the bottom of a deep glass and was as ephemeral as smoke. It would slip through the fingers, and entirely evade capture the following morning when the brain tried to process the fragments of the night before. Any lasting and beneficial enlightenment was certain to be lost in a foggy haze of the night bus and the kebab house queue.

No such epiphany had occurred to me.

I sat with the others and said very little as we drank our way through the Jim Beam. We talked, but not in any meaningful way. I began to lose a grip on time, the odd sensation of the cold at my back juxtaposed with the warmth of the fire on my face and the bourbon in my belly.

Smoke swirled away up into the stars, making ever more bizarre shapes that twisted and morphed enticingly. I watched Ty nonchalantly knock the contents of his mug down his throat and pour another. He was seemingly unaffected as if carved from stone; the only thing that would get to him was the erosion of a thousand years of the wind's caress.

Despite the way events were panning out, I felt safe in the presence of Ty. He possessed an easy sense of stability, command and power. Nothing could touch me when he was watching my back, especially not some jumped-up loan shark from the Black Country.

I shifted my gaze and contemplated Martha with the kind of brazen stare that alcohol can produce. She sat with her knees tucked up snug to her chest and her arms wrapped tightly around her shins. Her wide almond eyes were fixed at the heart of the fire and the lids drooped slightly with sleep and booze. She was more under the influence than Ty, who looked as if he could drink both bottles of spirits then shoot the droplet of piss off a gnat's dick.

Deep down I wanted to talk to her; just sidle over and start to whisper and not stop until I was empty. I would tell her everything; about how I felt and what she meant to me. I wanted to reassure her, cradle her in my arms and stroke her hair, telling her that it would all be fine. I longed to tell her that we would find this loan shark and help the police lock him up, far away from Pebble Deeping, far away from us.

Every time I came close to giving-in and pouring my heart out into the dirt at Martha's feet, I managed to claw myself back with a little applied reason. She was a friend, and I at least wanted to keep her that way. What's more she was going through a traumatic and emotional time and the last thing she needed was a drunken loved-up dickhead acting like a schoolboy.

The fire died and the bottle emptied. Martha struggled to her feet and tottered in the direction of the house. I shot to my feet in an effort to help her, The Knight In Bourbon Armour, and promptly lost my footing and fell arse-over-tit.

She giggled a little, swayed with the mirthful rocking of her shoulders and then Ty was at her side walking her into the house with a firm grip on her arm.

"Smooth," I said to no one in particular.

Martha had been gone for a few minutes and Ty had returned. He and I sat prodding the embers of the fire and watching the glowing coals flicker, when I heard a trilling noise.

"Do you hear that?" I asked Ty who had his eyes closed and his hands clasped behind his head.

"Yup," he said quietly. "Mobile."

"It's not mine," I said. "Must be Martha's..." I looked around the area where Martha had been sitting and saw the light from the device as it chirped and vibrated merrily in the dirt.

I picked it up and glanced at the screen which was showing a number with a Birmingham code. The fact that no name was displayed suggested that the caller was not registered in Martha's phone. As I was pondering this, the ringing stopped, and I slipped it into my pocket for safe keeping.

"Who was it?" Ty asked, stretching his arms and working the muscles in his shoulders like a big cat.

"I don't know, they rang off," I replied.

No sooner had I spoken than the phone began to ring again. I wriggled it from my pocket and looked at the screen once more. It was the same Birmingham number. I paused for a split-second, and then pressed the answer button.

"Martha?" a man's voice spoke, and I got the unwelcome feeling that I was trespassing into her privacy. This could be her boyfriend for all I knew.

"No..." I replied sheepishly.

"Tyrone Edge?" The voice cut me off. Asking after Ty? This was no boyfriend. The voice had dropped and was so full of menace that it would freeze a polar bear's nuts off.

"No... Who's this?" I asked, but I already had a fair idea.

"I am a man who is owed a lot of money, among other things. Who the fuck are you?" the man spoke the words as a demand rather than a question.

"The Tooth Fairy," I replied without really thinking. I was going to have to do something about my impetuous streak. It had been doing me very little good in recent times.

"Well then, Mr. Tooth Fairy, I reckon you and me will be meeting soon, and then we'll see what's what," the voice said. I didn't like the sound of that. Not one bit.

"Listen, you..." I started, but the line had gone dead. I placed the phone back in my pocket and gazed out over the dark meadow.

"Martha's mum?" Ty asked flippantly.

"Hardly. I think that might have been our loan shark," I replied.

"I see you made your usual good first impression," he yawned, unconcerned.

"Yeah, we've got a date, he's bringing flowers but wasn't too pleased to hear that I don't put out without a three-course meal," I said. Ty laughed.

"What did he sound like?" He asked.

"Mean as Hell," I replied.

Edge merely nodded and closed his eyes again. A slight breeze ruffled the tangled locks of his dark hair, his face blank and contented as if he hadn't a care in the world.

He was probably dreaming about the seeds he had planted, or about how to catch a wild rabbit.

For my part, I wondered for the tenth time what I had got myself into, but there was no thought of backing out now, not if Martha might be in danger.

Negotiating the ladder up to the hayloft proved tricky, as the rungs were uncooperative and kept shifting in- and out-of-focus while changing position with each other.

Finally, I made it up there and crawled into the dented hollow of my sleeping area. Too tired and drunk to undress, I just wriggled deep into my bag and was asleep before my head had sunk fully into the pillow, an image of Martha dancing behind my eyelids.