Dead in Time

Chapter Eight

“He tell you about that? Leon?”

“No,” I said, a trifle testily, perhaps still wanting to push him, perhaps cross with myself for having the impulse in the first place. “You don’t have to worry. He was very loyal. About as forthcoming as a shed door when it got to relevant details. You know what? If you don’t want me to dig, I don’t know why you—”

Damon slumped against the worktop, ankles crossed in his best attitude of elegance dishabille.

“Not this again,” he grumbled, shaking the half-melted ice in his glass.

“Well, there was no bloody point picking me in the first place,” I snapped, tired of these circuitous games, “if I never get told anything. I don’t know why you bothered.”

“Connection,” he muttered from the depths of his glass. “I tole you, baby. I tried so many times… came up short. You gotta find a connection, a way to—”

“Oh, connection. What does that even mean?”

I shot a look at him over the teapot. Head thrown back, his hair spilled behind him, the white angles of his neck cast in sharp relief. He leant back on his elbows as he stared at the kitchen ceiling, drink and ciggie both dangling artlessly from one hand. Thick, honey-gold sideburns ended at perfect parallels to the points of his jaw. I realised I was staring when he raised his head and looked at me, like he’d reached some kind of decision.

Damon took a last drag on his cigarette and dumped it in the glass. He put it down on the worktop and left it there, looking faintly like modern art.

“S’about a lot of shit, babe. You know that, and you know I can’t… I can’t let you blow your mind on this, Ellis.”

I snorted derisively.

“But,” he said, and the word cut through me, “I’ll tell you one thing.”

I said nothing, sitting myself down at the kitchen table. Green-painted gate-leg thing, secondhand; if I’d wanted, I could have tried to call it shabby chic. I arched my eyebrow at him, trying to look insouciant. “You understand,” Day said simply, and slid into the chair opposite me.

It was one of those red-rag-to-a-bull statements.

“What?”

He shrugged wordlessly, pulling the lighter and the pack of Camels from his pocket. From my chair, I reached a chipped saucer from the worktop and plunked it down in front of him. I really never thought I’d need to own ashtrays, and I still couldn’t find the one Auntie Jan had bought me.

“No,” I said sharply. “Come on. What the fuck am I supposed to understand? Hm?”

Damon drew a cigarette from the pack, suddenly and evasively interested in lighting it, but I wasn’t about to let this one go.

“Seriously,” I snapped, “exactly what is it that you mean by that? I mean, this has got to be good… what do I understand?”

Dark eyes flicked to me over the intricate cupping of hands around cigarette and lighter. He stopped and slowly took the unlit cylinder from his lips, dropping the lighter to the table. For the first time, I saw the inscription; just a row of letters and numbers in a calligraphic font.

D ~ 3.6.74 ~ I

I wondered if she’d bought it for him. And I wondered if she’d ever told him about the baby.

Damon cleared his throat, tapping the cigarette against the carton. He opened his mouth, fumbling around the words—the first time I’d seen him really struggle—the tip of his tongue pressed against his teeth.