Twenty-Four #2
‘Oh, OK.’ Miller tried his damnedest not to look remotely worked up or over-excited. ‘Which … ?’
‘NA. Narcotics Anonymous.’
‘I know what it stands for.’
Miller knew because he’d done a lot of research.
As might be expected in a town with a far higher than average number of addicts, there was a huge variety of meetings available for those in recovery from an equally wide array of addictions.
Drink, drugs, sex, gambling, food, video games, pornography, exercise, shopping, work, body modification and a good many more.
He had even come across a meeting for those poor, benighted individuals addicted to badminton.
Miller had been oddly fascinated, though he could not imagine that it was very well attended or that, once you’d got beyond how inherently funny the word ‘shuttlecock’ was, the stories being told were particularly racy.
In terms of those that catered for drug addicts, NA was the most appropriate for someone like Finn, but there were plenty of others to choose from.
MA (Marijuana Anonymous), CA (Cocaine Anonymous) and Al Anon, which Miller had assumed was your bog-standard Alcoholics Anonymous, but whose meetings were more often than not tailored to support the friends and relatives of addicts.
Miller had gone along to several such meetings in a church hall in Queenstown and found them enormously helpful.
They’d talked a lot about the dangers of ‘enabling’ the addict in your family, and though Miller understood the basic principle, some of the definitions remained a little confusing.
The boundaries were … up for discussion.
There were, for example, hardcore types who would accuse Miller of enabling Finn’s addiction simply by making her cheese on toast, because the money she would otherwise have had to spend on food could now be spent on drugs.
That, Miller had decided, was taking things a bit far.
‘So, you went to a meeting while you were still … you know.’
‘Using, yeah. I told them I was still using and it was fine.’
‘Right …’
‘They’re not just for people in recovery.’
Miller was still trying to sound as casual as possible, like they could have been talking about Love Island or the price of fish. ‘So, being as you’re … not in recovery, why did you … ?’
‘Well, for a kick-off, there’s always coffee and biscuits.’
‘Worth going just for that, I would’ve thought.’ Miller waited.
Finn pushed fingers into her hair and twisted them.
For a minute or more she nudged the toe of a dirty trainer back and forth across the painted floorboards.
Then she glanced up at Miller. ‘I don’t honestly know,’ she said.
‘Not really. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately …
I do think, you know? I’m not drifting around town off my tits all the time. ’
‘I know.’ Miller waited until she glanced up again, and smiled. ‘Just some of the time, right?’
He got a half-smile in return. ‘A girl I knew died recently.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Miller said.
‘It happens, doesn’t it?’
Miller nodded. What was it he’d said to Alex just before Finn had shown up? It’s odds on …
‘So, I wanted to go somewhere where there would be people who understood, that’s all.
It’s not like I’ve never been to a meeting before.
I just thought it would be nice to go along …
maybe share something if I felt like it, but basically just to connect with a few people.
’ She looked up again and Miller could see that now there were tears starting to brim.
‘I thought it would help. I thought it might make me feel a bit better. But actually …’
‘What?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Finn said.
‘Course it matters.’
‘Shit … I should never have got into all this. Should have just had my cheese on toast and buggered off.’ She shook her head, wiping away tears and snot with her sleeve.
Miller was struggling to find the right words, but that was largely because the need to empty his bladder had suddenly become overwhelming.
He just about managed to say, ‘Give me five minutes … we can pick this straight back up again,’ and walked out, heading quickly for the small toilet next to the front door. ‘Only if you want to, obviously …’
The call of nature had been no more than partly answered when Miller heard the front door close on the other side of the wall.
He shouted Finn’s name, though he knew he was wasting his time.
When he was finally in a position to open the front door, he stared out into the darkness, but could see nothing save for the swaying shapes of trees against a near-black sky.
Beyond them, on the still blacker sea, there were only scattered pinpricks of light from the Isle of Man and the flashing reds of a ship moving south along the coast towards Wales.
A couple of hours later, when he was thinking about heading up to bed, Miller’s phone rang, and he snatched at it, thinking that it might be Finn.
Hoping that it was. He tried not to sound too disappointed when he answered the phone to Xiu, who was calling with another snippet of intelligence passed on to her by the night shift.
‘I don’t think you’re going to be massively surprised,’ she said.
The Audi registered to one of Jacqui Cutler’s companies – the car that had almost certainly been driven by the man suspected of murdering Darren Grant – had been found burned out on wasteland just off the Plymouth Road, between the railway line and the giant Aldi.