The Ties That Bind Read Online Free PDF Page B

Luke felt the protective bubble form around him again.
    Len Earnshaw was disappointing in the flesh, and flesh he had in great spare folds. When Luke saw him, picking his way through a packet of scampi flavour crisps, goitre spilling over the neck of his shell suit, he realised he’d been expecting, somehow, to see a trim spiv in a three-piece suit emerging through a cloud of cigarette smoke. You couldn’t even smoke in pubs any more, which showed just how far ahead of reality he had let his fantasy run.
    Earnshaw sank three pints of bitter to Luke’s one. He wondered if he should try to match his pace, earn his respect; he had after all soft-sold the meeting as two blokes going for a drink. His notebook and phone were hidden deep in his coat pockets. If Earnshaw said anything important, he would just have to remember it. Truman Capote had boasted 94% recall of every conversation he had ever had, and Luke was training himself to achieve the same.
    Retaining tracts of dialogue was not to be a problem: Earnshaw remained monosyllabic, refusing even to begin to discuss his past unless he got money up front. Luke tried patiently to explain the catch-22 he was in, that he couldn’t secure an advance until he had Earnshaw’s co-operation. In desperation he pledged to give him half of anything he could raise. (This wasn’t as rash as it might have been a few months ago: thanks to Jem’s support, his financial motivation for writing the book was no longer as pressing as it had been. Although Jem gave him a generous allowance, he also insisted on paying for everything, from new clothes to the fast, light laptop that he now worked on and the kid-leather satchel he carried it in. Luke’s bank account was filling up without him even trying to save.)
    Now Luke gave Earnshaw the hard sell. He showed him his scrapbook of cuttings to demonstrate that he’d done the groundwork, and told him the angle he wanted to take. ‘I think that the Leeds underworld has been very much overlooked,’ he said. ‘Your past links up with a few faces from Manchester and Liverpool that people will have heard of, and of course you knew the twins. People are always desperate for a new connection with the twins.’ By the end of it, he thought he could detect something spark behind the dead eyes, and he left the meeting feeling that he had done more to help his cause than hinder it.
    He wanted to call Jem and tell him how it had gone, but he was with clients all day. Knowing that his route home would take him near his old maisonette, he called Viggo to see if he was in the mood for a tea break and was delighted when he said he’d put the kettle on. As he hung up, the phone ran out of power. Oh well. He’d just have a quick cuppa and still have time to go to Waitrose and get something nice in for the evening meal that he was learning not to call tea but supper.
    Luke’s old room was a proper study now and the sitting room was tidier than it had been for years.
    ‘Enjoying the work?’ Luke asked him.
    ‘Mm-hmm. Aminah’s quite high-maintenance. She doesn’t know what she wants. Her story keeps changing and every time it does, the whole thing has to be run through this massive team of lawyers. And she knows some horrible people. She grew up with drug dealers and pimps, actual pimps. I don’t know why you find all this gangland stuff attractive. It scares the shit out of me. Anyway, enough about me and my downward social spiral. How’s love’s middle-aged dream?’
    ‘It’s good,’ said Luke, wondering why the question felt like an accusation.
    ‘Why doesn’t he ever come out? Why don’t you ever come out any more? Have you started going out with his mates instead?’ Viggo pulled a horrified face, hand splayed on his breastbone. ‘Luke, are you seeing other people?’
    Luke laughed and shook his head, even though he didn’t like to be reminded that Jem didn’t seem to have a single friend apart from him. Presumably his old friends were