A moment more went by and then Mrs. Langley nodded.
“Thank you,” Paul said. “In that case, in order to help me with my enquiries, I'd like to know what Michael is really like. Or what he was like seven years ago. I understand people change. The reason I ask this is that knowing the man a little better—from someone who knew him for a long time, rather than the few days my client did, however intensely—will help me find out more about what might have really happened.” As he spoke, Paul gazed at Eva Langley. Not harshly, but as if he were waiting, and would be prepared to wait a long, long time until she was ready to answer.
“All right,” she said at last, breaking the impasse so that they all shifted their positions a little. Her voice broke as she continued speaking and her husband took hold of her hand. “All right. Michael is—or was—my brother. Whatever you say, I still believe he's dead and, now, that
your client
killed him, but I want to know exactly what happened. Of course I do. I try not to think about hope; I can't. Not anymore. But there are things that I must ask you to do.”
Paul nodded. “Please. Ask away.”
Eva released Jack's hand, leaned forward. Caught Paul with her gaze as if they were the only two people in the room. “I want you to investigate for a month only. No more than that. I can't bear it for longer. And if, at any time before the month is up, I find I can't bear it anyway and I want you to stop, then that is what will happen. I understand that I'm not your client and I'm only providing information for you, but I think that, as Michael's sister, I have a greater claim than his one-time lover. I will also go to the police with what you've told me, see if they can do anything else.”
She suddenly began to cry. Jack wrapped his arm around her shoulders and Craig reached for tissues, but she waved them away. “No, please, I'm fine.”
“Mrs. Langley.” Something in Paul's voice made them all look at him. He took hold of Eva's hands. “Mrs. Langley, I know what it's like when a relative goes missing. My sister disappeared when we were both very young. She was never found. I know that after that everything changes. Please believe me when I say I'll do what I can to get closer to the truth about Michael. If in turn you could not talk to the police immediately, but later when I've had a chance to work on the case for a while, that might be helpful. Without a body and as your brother wasn't a child when he disappeared, they won't give it the focus that I will. At least not without more evidence of some kind. So, if you and Mr. Robertson are both happy with these terms, then I hope we can continue on that basis. Craig?”
Thinking about what he'd found at his father's house and wondering if that after all constituted some kind of “evidence,” Craig nodded. Paul gave him a brief smile and then turned back to Eva. A long silence followed his words. So long that Craig didn't know if it would ever end, or even if he was brave enough to want it to.
“I hadn't known about your sister,” Eva said at last. “And, yes, I agree with what you say. For now. What would you like to know first?”
They talked about Michael. Or rather Eva talked and the three men listened, with Paul taking notes every now and then. She started off with her brother as an adult, how he'd hated his work, even though it was a good job, but had seen it as a necessary evil on the road to doing what he really wanted to, which was being a writer. Some of his poems had already been published in small magazines, but he was in the middle of writing a novel when he'd vanished. Craig hadn't known any of this. They hadn't talked about it and he wished with all his being that they'd had the time. Or that Craig had thought to ask him. He'd known how much Michael read, but he'd never thought to make the logical connection. Now, for a man like him, it seemed obvious.
As Eva continued to talk, Craig came to know Michael again in a different way. His love of opera of course he knew about. But this too opened out into something else: a fine baritone voice, on the rare occasions Michael found time to sing. Occasionally in one of the local churches, but less often than his sister would have liked. She talked too of the times they'd spent together, the meals they'd shared, the films they'd been to. Sometimes as a foursome with Jack and Peter, but more often just the two of them.
“He would have been a good uncle,” she said, tears glistening again in her eyes. “If he'd been allowed to be. But he never had the chance.”
As she said these last words, she glanced at Craig, her eyes cold, and he looked away, reddening.
As time ticked by, he and Paul heard about Michael's younger days: his years at university, his schooldays and even a couple of moments from childhood, the memory of which still made Eva smile.
“We never really got on that well when we were children,” she said. “Then again, does anyone? It was only in late teenage that we really got to know each other. The two years between us didn't seem to matter so much then. Mind you, he could still make me the angriest I've ever been. Not that me being angry had much effect—he could give you the cold shoulder if he had a mind to. I still remember the week we didn't speak to each other, but I can't recall what it was all about now. It's funny how what was so important then can be so completely forgotten. And I don't think he
ever
passed a phone message on to me and I'm sure I lost at least two boyfriends that way. Not to mention several nights out with girlfriends. Though he would never admit it; he could be stubborn in his own fashion, and you could never get him to do something he didn't want to do. I don't know why he did that.”
“Maybe he was lonely,” Craig said, staring down at the table. “He always gave me the impression that he could be lonely, though I didn't realize it while I was with him. It was something I only thought about later.”
Eva blinked and her jaw tightened.
“Yes,” she said, hesitating over the words as if reluctant to say them. “Yes, he could be lonely. He never made friends easily. Perhaps that was why he was jealous of mine.”
“How did he meet Peter?” Craig asked her. “I know they were together for a long time before they split up. He told me that.”
“Eight years,” she replied, though to Paul and not to Craig. “They were together for eight years. He met Peter at a party given by a friend of them both, I think. It developed quickly from there, though they only really found a house together a couple of years after that.”
“Did you like Peter?” Craig couldn't help himself. He wanted to know.
Eva sighed and stared down at the floor for a moment or so. “I've always said yes to that whenever anyone has asked. Even now. I don't know why. Loyalty, I suppose. Michael loved him. How could I say I didn't?”
“What didn't you like about him, Mrs. Langley?” This time the question came from Paul.
“Nothing specific,” she replied. “Not exactly. It's just that he always seemed as if he was in the relationship just to have a good time, even though he was older than my brother. It wasn't serious for him, as it was for Michael. Sometimes he enjoyed making Michael jealous, even though he meant nothing by it. He could be quite flippant. Don't you agree, Jack?”
She turned to her husband, who nodded. “A little, maybe. But I think it was just his way. He liked the attention. And of course in the end—”
“Yes,” Eva said, “in the end it was Peter who got hurt after all.”
Craig stared at her. “No, that can't be right. Michael was devastated when I met him. He told me how much Peter had hurt
him
.”
Chin up, Eva stared back at him for the first time since after he'd told her what he'd done. “That was true. Of course it was. Ending a relationship is never easy. But the fact is that it was my brother who cheated on Peter. He had an affair with a friend from work. I think it went on for about four or five months or so, though Michael never said. When Peter found out, he was furious. And that surprised me too. They had a terrible row—I think they might even have physically fought each other—and Michael walked out. Swore he'd never go back, no matter how much Peter pleaded with him. He was living with Jack and me when he went on that holiday to Devon. You ... you didn't know any of that, did you?”
Unable to speak, Craig was grateful for Paul's hand on his shoulder. The truths he'd always assumed to be right were suddenly falling out of their accustomed place in his life. He'd trusted Michael. Instinctively. He thought the older man had been honest, would have staked his heart on it too. Now he'd found that Michael had been deceiving him. Could he actually rely on the reality of his memories at all?
“No,” he said at last. “No, I didn't know. It's not how he told it to me. God, you must think I'm an idiot, but I suppose I was very young. I thought ... I thought I meant more to him, that's all.”
“You did,” Eva said. “No matter what you did to my brother, I'm convinced of that. He said so in his card. The one I showed you. That was why we spent so long trying to track you down after Michael disappeared.”
Craig shook his head, trying to let her know it didn't matter, and the conversation moved on. Not that there was much else to hear that was different from what they'd heard before. Paul made more notes, took down the last-known contact details of Peter and also the name of Michael's friend from work—a man called Adrian—and then the meeting was over. All the time, Craig's mind churned over the fact that what he'd thought to be real, however short-lived, had apparently been something less than that. He was being stupid; even he could see that. But it surprised him how much he must have clung on to his teenage dream of perfection in order to feel this way now.
It made him think about other parts of his past, in a way he didn't want to.
When Paul returned from seeing the Langleys out, he hugged Craig. “That was tough. Are you okay?”
Craig gave a short laugh, one without humor. “You mean apart from confessing to Eva Langley that I might have killed her brother, then having love's young dream blown out of the water and being told things weren't as perfect as I thought they were? Yeah, I'm fine. No bloody problem.”
“You're not a good liar, you know.”
“Yeah, I know that too. Sorry.”
Paul smiled. “People are always human, Craig. A mixture of good and bad. It's the way things are. It doesn't mean to say something wasn't right. At the time. For you and for Michael.”
“I know that too, but thanks.”
They stayed silent for a few moments, then Paul spoke again. “Look, if you still want me to pursue this particular avenue rather than tracking down your father, then the next thing is to talk to Peter and this Adrian. If they're willing. After seven years, they might not be.”
Craig knew Paul was preparing him for failure, but he nodded anyway. “Let's do it. After all, it can't get any worse, and what have we got to lose?”
In spite of this bravado, he only had a faint hope that what he said might be true.
Chapter Seventeen
Finding Adrian proved a lot easier than tracking down Peter. It only took Paul a couple of phone calls to discover that Adrian had moved from his old firm—the one where he'd met Michael—and was now working for another insurance broker only a couple of streets away in the city. It took another five minutes after that to make an appointment. On the pretext of wanting to discuss business. While Paul made the call, Craig listened to him spin a tale in order to get the meeting. When he put the phone down, Craig grinned.
“God, you're good.”
“Convinced?”
“You bet. Especially by the fact that you didn't mention insurance once.”
Paul shrugged. “It covers me. People don't want to speak to a PI by choice, not initially, but once I'm there, they tend to get interested and answer the questions. Even though they might not know that's what they're doing. And it helps in these cases if I haven't lied too much in the first place.”
“Can I come with you?”
He hesitated. “It will be easier alone. I don't mean to be funny but—”
“But I might cramp your style?”
“God, no.” To his surprise, Paul hunkered down in front of him, put his hand on the back of his head, and drew him into a fierce kiss. As dark as coffee but twice as strong. When it ended, he smiled as Craig caught his breath. But there was still something in that smile that remained uncertain.
“No matter what you do or have done, I don't think you could ever cramp my style,” Paul said. “If I had any.”
“Believe me, you do. But I still can't come with you?”
“No. Afraid not. Some things I need to do on my own.”
That made sense, but Craig made him promise that he'd ring and tell him what he found out as soon as he could. At home later that night, alone, he tried to get straight in his head the things that were happening. It took a while, and he found he needed a couple of beers and some wallpaper TV to help him. Until he escaped to his bedroom, Maddy or Julie kept wandering in, but didn't stay long. Was it obvious he was trying to think? Trying being the word for sure. After all, he wasn't employed for his brain power. Though he was damn sure he would have got those A levels if he'd taken them. That was his story anyway, in spite of what his father had said. His father had never been a great one for education, preferring to trust in the Lord and work with his hands. On the land, where maybe he felt most at home.
Funny how since he'd met Paul, so much had happened. And all to do with the past. That was unfair though. It wasn't Paul's fault that Andrea's letter about his father had arrived on the same day as his call. That was simply coincidence. He was being great—even in spite of the doubts Paul obviously still had about him. Craig hoped what was happening wouldn't put him off entirely. Gay Rule Number Thirteen—unlucky for some:
Don't let them see you're a complete psycho before they've expressed some kind of commitment first.
He'd failed on both counts then: though he probably wasn't a psycho—at least if he had killed someone then it was an accident, wasn't it?—but he hadn't waited to see what Paul's feelings were before plunging into his own commitment, all guns firing. Which might make him a psycho after all. Who could tell?