‘Come down from there,’ he called.
Jason shook his head and raised his arms so that he looked like a living statue.
‘I’m innocent,’ he shouted down, and Lawrence, now standing beside Jenna, laughed scornfully. ‘The man you want is there.’ He pointed down to Lawrence, who reiterated his scornful laugh, but with an extra forced quality.
‘Come down, and we can talk,’ shouted the policeman. ‘Or we can come up to you.’
‘Can I go up?’ urged Jenna. ‘Let me talk to him.’
‘If he’s suicidal, it should be a professional,’ demurred the officer.
‘He’s not suicidal. He’s just being dramatic. Let me talk to him.’
Jason picked something up from beside him on the ledge and threw it over the side. Paper fluttered down, like ungainly snow. His drawings.
‘What’s he doing?’ one of the police officers wondered.
Jenna wasn’t going to wait for their permission any more. She ran into the house and up the stairs, to the room that gave access on to the parapet. She could see Jason’s lower legs through the little doorway and she hurried up to them.
‘Jason, please come down,’ she begged, her heart in her throat, which was dry. She wanted to heave.
‘This is it, babe,’ he said. ‘Death or glory.’
‘Oh, don’t! You wouldn’t. You can’t. Jason, please, for me.’
‘For you? Lawrence Harville’s girlfriend? Please.’
‘I’m not. You can’t think that! I can’t stand him, now I know what he really is. It was him, wasn’t it, behind all the drug stuff?’
‘Nobody can prove it, so why bother to mention it?’
‘Because it matters. Your name will be cleared, I swear, I won’t give up as long as I have breath in my body. Harville might have won for now, but the truth will come out. I promise you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a pause.
‘What are you sorry for?’
‘Mixing you up in all this. You’ll get done now, for perverting the course of justice, and your life’ll be ruined along with mine. I should’ve got off, that first night, left the area, left the country.’
‘But then we’d never have … Please come in. Please, don’t jump. I’ll never get over it if you do. I love you.’
‘Jen, don’t.’ His voice, which had been full of laconic bravado, now wobbled. ‘You shouldn’t. I’m nothing.’
‘You’re everything,’ she whispered. ‘To me.’
‘I’m a no-good jailbird.’
‘I’ll wait for you.’
‘Don’t wait for me.’
‘You can’t stop me. I’ll wait for you till I’m ninety if I have to.’
There was a pause, then a grudging laugh. ‘I don’t think the sentence is as stiff as all that. Besides, what about a hundred? Is ninety your limit then? Snuff out your ninety candles and then bugger off into the sunset with some old geezer from the pensioner bingo night? I thought you cared about me.’
‘I more than care about you. I love you. Please, come down.’
She saw his feet flex on to tiptoe, then flatten again, then he shifted his weight from one to the other, before finally there was a mutter of, ‘OK. For you.’