The Tied Man

Chapter Twenty Seven

Finn

Hands groped for me in the darkness and I yelled out and woke and hurt, all in one go.  My sheet was wrapped around me, sweat-soaked and tight as a shroud.

Lilith’s dishevelled head appeared over the horizon of the bed.  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and checked her watch.  ‘One hour and forty-two minutes.  We have a new record.’

‘Go me,’ I panted as I attempted to unravel myself.  ‘What about you?’

Lilith looked at her watch again.  ‘I dozed off about ten minutes after you.  Let’s call it an hour and a half, give or take a minute.’

This had been the pattern for the last two days, since I had failed in my attempt to be dead.  Lilith hadn’t moved from my side; she just bunked down on a camp bed that Henry had hauled into the room for her, and slept when I slept.

I swung my legs off the bed and stood to grab my hooded sweater from the nearest chair.  The room started spinning like a merry-go-round and  I slumped back down, trying to look nonchalant and hoping that Lilith wasn’t watching me.  Fat chance.  ‘So when are you going to share this amazing plan for the Great Escape?’ I asked in a sorry attempt at distraction.

‘When you decide to start eating again,’ Lilith replied.

‘Ah.  That.’

‘Yes, that.’

‘I was kinda hoping you hadn’t noticed.’

‘What, that you’re existing on fresh air and tea?’  She sat down next to me. ‘When did you last eat, Finn?’

I tried to count backwards.  ‘When did you get back from London?’

‘You’ve got to be joking.  That’s twelve days, Finn.’

‘Is it?  Jesus.  Guess I’ll be back in that bikini by summer.’

‘It’s not bloody funny.’

‘I know.  I know it’s not.  And I’m not doing it to be awkward, I swear.  But I had Coyle gobbin’ into everything he brought for me when I was banged up in the cellar, and to be honest with you, food’s never been up there on my list of priorities in the first place.  Now I’ve got Henry throwing stuff together for me like he’s going for his next Michelin star, and I can’t stomach a mouthful from the traitorous little fucker.’

‘Well, this is the deal.  You eat, I tell you the plan.  Surely there’s something you could manage?’

‘Lili, my system’s fucked to all hell –  Junkie’s legacy, probably.  I couldn’t face the shite that Henry’s trying to force down my neck at the best of times, but right now I’m feeling sick just at the sight of food.’

‘I need you stronger than this, Finn.  I know it’s hard for you, but there’s one hell of a fight to come.  You’re going to have to think of it as fuel.’

So I thought about it.  I could only conjure up one thing, from when I was a kid in Dublin with nothing in the cupboards but dust and mouse-shit, and two little sisters screeching for food.  Then I imagined Henry having to prepare it, and I knew what I fancied for breakfast.  I smiled for the first time in days.

‘Well, there might just be something.’

Lilith

Finn’s request for dinner broke Henry’s heart, and if that wasn’t the major reason for his choice, it certainly played a major part.  It was like watching the final act of a condemned man as Henry spooned half an inch of condensed milk onto white bread and sprinkled it liberally with sugar. ‘This is disgusting,’ he said as he carried the tray into my room.  ‘A travesty.’

‘Not half as disgusting as the shite you’ve been serving me for the last three years.’ Finn took the plate from Henry without even looking at him.  ‘Like those fuckin’ eggs with bits of grass in ‘em that you did yesterday.’

‘That was an omelette aux fines herbes,’ Henry retorted.

‘No, it was shite.’

I tried not to hold my breath as Finn broke off a morsel of bread and placed it tentatively in his mouth.  He swallowed.  ‘Right, that’s my side of the bargain upheld.  So, how the fuck do you intend to bring this empire of evil crashing down?’

‘I need to make a private phonecall.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Henry interjected, defeated before we had even begun.  ‘Blaine has every telephone around here tapped. Even the public box in the resort, I think, for pure amusement – but there’s no way of using that one anyway: the boat’s kept on the mainland now, and I have to wait for Coyle to pick me up before I can do the shopping. ’