a singularity/melanie tem...... 5 the only broken blonde/simon avery...... 19 bless/stephen volk...... 65 the simpson frames/antony mann...... 89 cheap rent/janice law...... 97 by night he could not see/joel lane...... 110 what grief can do/stephen bacon...... 119 scenes from country life/tim lees...... 127 night fishing/james cooper...... 139 unfinished business/christopher priest...... 168 dodge county/danny rhodes...... 183 The Space That Runs Away With You/steven j. dines...... 196 gator moon/ray cluley...... 220 trial/kristine kathryn rusch...... 234 the contributors...... 240 a issn 1463 1350 • isbn 978-0-9553683-7-0 • Copyright © 2013 Crimewave on behalf of all contributors • Published in the UK by TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs cb6 2lb • Subscribe to Crimewave: four issues for just £36 uk or £40 europe or £44 usa/row, by cheque payable to TTA Press or by credit/debit card sent to the above address, or subscribe securely online at ttapress.com • Thanks to Peter Tennant for his expert proofreading • Cover art by Ben Baldwin (benbaldwin.co.uk) • Edited and typeset by Andy Cox • Printed in the UK

hurts 3

a When Roxy first showed up in town she was sixteen and looked a lot younger, skinny with caramel-colored braids and pretty gray eyes her face hadn’t quite grown into yet and a drinking problem bigger than she was. I was not quite thirty-two, plenty old enough in this neck of the woods to be her daddy. But father-daughter wasn’t what we were, nor big brother-little sister, and for sure we have never been lovers in the usual sense of the word. Right from the start, we’ve been friends. Nothing more precious or more strange in this world. I felt sure she had terrible secrets she needed to tell somebody and I wanted to be the one, stuff like what’s all over the news now and in common parlance but you didn’t hear about so much back then, like you wouldn’t hear much about breathing. Turns out nothing terrible had happened to her yet; she was just on her way to it. And Roxy’s more a doer than a teller. By the time I’d been here for a while, realization had seeped over me like fog over the valley. About Teddy McLaren’s fall off the porch between second and third grade that broke his back. About the woman in Ralston Bandy’s barn. About Misty Wilcox having her first baby at twelve and one per year after that till she died in childbirth at twenty- one. About Froggy Fogarty dead in his bed before his time even if he was eighty-one, and that girl who took care of him never seen in these parts again. I’ve learned a lot about what can happen to people and what they think about what happens to them, how the rules don’t always apply. How, in the course of a human life just as in the course of what we think of as the universe, there can come a point where we know so

singularity 5 much we don’t know a thing. I believe in the singularity. I’d call it a fact rather than a belief, like everybody does about what they believe. Unless Roxy has kept it from me all these years – and I don’t think she has any secrets from me by now, or suspects that I do from her – her story was what she told me when she first walked into the shop and asked did I need anybody, and I said no, and she kind of reared back and said I ought to hire her anyway, which I did. On the surface she was nothing more or less than a cocky kid full of herself and impatient to take on the world. Her folks were still determined to raise her, and nobody was going to tell Roxanne Dixon what to do. You couldn’t call it running away; she wasn’t fleeing, she was going toward something, some horizon, she had no idea what but she knew it was real and true. Left her parents’ home and their suburb and their world. Stuck out her thumb and went wherever whoever picked her up was going, which could’ve been any of a whole slew of wonderful and terrible places and eventually turned out to be here. She missed her dog. I myself did run from a bigger, noisier town a thousand miles and a lifetime away, and lighted here for no reason other than that I’d understood more than I could possibly understand. It’s a pretty place – green hills, thick woods. People can keep to themselves if they want, or cross paths with just about anybody else. You can hide out. But not from everything, and maybe not forever. “Your name is Goober?” She rolled her big gray eyes and giggled like the kid she was, swigged from the Bud can like a pro. “My mama liked peanuts.” “Whyn’t she call you Peanut, then?” Roxy’s always asking questions that, if there even are answers, I don’t know them. That first five minutes, I started making up answers. “Already had a puppy named Peanut,” I said. “Little brown thing.” Roxy always believes there’s more to know and always wants to know it. This morning over breakfast, for instance, we get to talking about string theory, which I like because it reminds me there are all different ways of thinking about the world. I’m telling how you can think of everything as being made up of strings of subatomic particles.

6 melanie tem Not that everything is like that, at this level scientists don’t talk about reality, only about ways to think about reality. Makes perfect sense to me. Drives Roxy nuts. She wants Truth, and she wants it to stay put. So she’s giving me one of her looks while she pokes another blueberry waffle onto my plate. Her waffles aren’t quite as good as mine were at my peak, but more and more I don’t much care to eat unless Roxy cooks and eats with me. Partway just to devil her, I keep talking. “It’s like a guitar string. You stretch it under pressure and it makes different musical tones. String theory says everything gets stretched in different ways and that creates excitation nodes. Or maybe it’s modes.” I’ll have to look that up. She snorts. Her hair, which she disdains to color because gray’s the truth, falls over her forehead like it does. She’s a beautiful woman, beauty different every day, lovely little lines at the corners of her mouth now as if from a sculptor’s tool, body less supple but more substantial. “So how do these strings, which may or may not actually exist – ” “Depending,” I insert, “on what you mean by ‘actually’ and ‘exist’.” “Oh, please.” Sometimes I love how she rolls her eyes. Sometimes it infuriates me. This morning love’s the truth. She goes on. “So how do they get stretched under pressure? What kind of pressure?” I say what I say to her a lot. “Don’t know yet.” She gives her trademark impatient sigh and goes to get dressed for her hike. “You going by yourself? Take your cell phone?” I fret when she’s out of earshot. Already she looks and smells outdoorsy when she comes back into the room, and I’m reminded of the warm coat she was wearing that bitter November day our paths first crossed. Bright red fleece, knee- length, with a hood. Caught your attention right off. Her parents had bought it for her when she’d told them she was going, because they knew how cold it can get in these mountains and even though she was leaving them they wanted her to be safe and warm. That’s true love, and Roxy knew it. She kisses the top of my head and puts on her backpack with the owl on it that I bought her in a shop in the Atlanta Underground a good twenty years ago. Roxy likes owls. Brahms flops his tail a couple

singularity 7 of times. Bubba whines and stands at attention, sure she’s taking him. She calls “have a good day” and I call be careful, and we say “I love you” to each other almost in sync. Life doesn’t get much better than that. Except for Bubba, who settles himself on the floor one piece at a time like a bag of loose change, heaves a long sigh, and prepares for another morning of missing Roxy. Brahms just takes what comes. I’m in the habit of starting my day by looking over the reading material stacked by my chair as if I’m just now discovering it. Print books, books and magazines on tape and CD and on the e-reader Roxy gave me for my birthday. The Gazette on Wednesdays that has more local news in the ads than anywhere else, and The Sunday New York Times. Articles Roxy has clipped or downloaded for me on subjects she thinks I’ll find interesting or ought to. Books I’m led to by other books, strings of books, excitation nodes. Dithering over where to start is half the fun. I’ve been eyeing this article on singularity. Sometimes black holes bother me, the idea of them appropriating and changing the very nature of whatever comes close. Other times I’m soothed by the thought of places where no spacetime rules apply and you can’t predict. “In supersymmetry,” the reader reads as if this is a language I should recognize, “a singularity happens when there are additional massless degrees of freedom in that certain point.” The reader’s mellifluous voice moves around inside me, or I’m mov- ing around inside it, or the voice and I are in some kind of singularity here and who knows what’s moving in what. “Similarly, singularities in spacetime often mean additional degrees of freedom.” I couldn’t parse or paraphrase any of that if the fate of the western world depended on it, but I get it in some oblique way. The way some- body who doesn’t know diddly about music can get Mozart or what Zoe Keating does with cello and computer. The way you can get some- body you love when you don’t understand them the least little bit. I can take only so much of it, though. I push off and try the large- print Reader’s Digest article about owls Roxy added to my trove weeks or years ago. That doesn’t hold my interest. I guess I just want to think

8 melanie tem about Roxy some more, and how our life together has been waffles and kisses and her push for truth versus my attraction to uncertainty, all of it inside a friendship so big and strong it’s really the only way to look at our world, the only thing it makes sense to believe in. This morning, most mornings, I got no place to be and nothing else to do, which is pitiful and also bounty. It didn’t take long for the boys and young men and older men and geezers to home in on this new young girl in town. She was one of a kind. Her looking like a baby made it even better. Around the pool table at the Hole, fellas talked about her nasty and admiring. At the beginning, when I was still concerned about my cover and before I loved her, I said some things, too, that I’m not proud of. I did. When she was there, she’d look right at us and draw herself up to her full height, which was not much to write home about, and toss her braids and say something nasty back but not in the least admiring. The Huckabee boys took to saving her a seat, usually on one of their laps, and sometimes she’d sit there for a few beers as if it was her idea, which by then it was. For a while Harold Wilcox was pretty much stalking her, telling her and everybody all the ways she was even prettier than his daughter Misty, bragging on how she could put away his best moonshine jar for jar with him, drink like a man and smell like a girl. When I’d warn her later, she’d inform me she didn’t need me fussing, she knew what she was doing. The women took notice of her, too – hard not to. Some girls her own age latched on to her right away, others talked bad about her behind her back, some did both, but I don’t think anybody ignored her. That girl who took care of Froggy Fogarty was kind of Roxy’s buddy for a bit, till Roxy stopped by one day to visit him like she did and she found him dead and she came home all upset and then the girl disappeared. What was her name? Roxy’ll remember. Things shift around Roxy. Rules quit applying. Symmetry gets super. She’s got more degrees of freedom than your average bear. Right away when Roxy told about hitchhiking, Shirleen behind the bar at the Hole started in with “You better watch yourself, girl. You’ll end up just like me.”

singularity 9 Roxy jutted out her chin like she does and said, “I ain’t a thing like you, Shirleen.” If Shirleen realized she’d been insulted, it didn’t deter her. “Get yourself trapped by some redneck and a passel of snot-nosed kids and you’ll never get loose.” Three or four of those very snot-nosed kids were in earshot but they never seemed to pay her any mind anyway. Roxy said something like “Nobody’ll ever trap me anywhere,” and that may be when I first knew I was going to love her. Ralph Gibson staked his claim to her within the first week. Maybe I could’ve stopped it, but I didn’t trust my own motivation, jealousy in both directions all cattywompus, and it’s just as likely that I’d have sent things off in some altogether unintended direction. He’d just bought that brand new red Chevy truck, and you’d see it cruise past the shop every few minutes when she was working and sometimes when she wasn’t but he thought she might be and hadn’t told him. Sometimes she’d go out and pretend like she was interested in the truck, peer under the hood with him, get down on her back with him to look under it. The things we do for love, or whatever you want to call it. Ralph was a good-looking kid in a mean sort of way, talked about being a mercenary soldier, getting paid to see the world and fight wherever there was fighting to be done. What he did eventually was marry the youngest Crandell girl and have two sets of twin boys and take over his daddy’s trash-hauling business. Most of his fighting’s been done in his own house and, as my out-of-true nose and at least one of the scars on his neck attest, now and then with me. Roxy played him like one of those stretched guitar strings, just to see what excitation nodes she could activate. She’d make eyes at him and brush up against him and drive off with him in front of the whole town. She let it be known to me and to Shirleen – which is to say, to everybody and his brother – that she wasn’t about to put out for him or anybody else until she was damn good and ready, and she gloated shamelessly about the power she and her virginity had over him. This made Ralph furious, and more and more sweet on her, if anything about a fella like him could be called “sweet”. Roxy was in her glory.

10 melanie tem By then she was working at the chicken plant, a place she said was like hell where she stood eight to ten hours a day pulling heads off live birds trussed up by the feet and swinging past on creaking and clanging conveyor belts face-high on her. But it paid fifty cents an hour more than I could. We both had rooms then in the old Miracle Hotel over there on Cherokee, where the Piggly Wiggly is now, and I’d see her come home splattered with blood and sticky feathers. She’d wash up and light out for the woods. She said she liked walking. She said the woods were clean and had live birds in them. I liked when she brought back flowers and rocks and feathers and we’d pore over those pocket guides to identify them and learn about their origins and needs and uses. I didn’t like when she came back smelling of liquor and I knew she’d been at somebody’s still, the only female deep in the woods with a bunch of sodden males. Bubba trails me as I wander from the bathroom to the bedroom to the laundry room to the kitchen for a glass of milk and a peanut butter cookie and back to my chair. I settle and pet him for a while. He relaxes a bit. I’ll do. Not the first time I’ve subbed for Roxy. The Huckabee kid brings the mail and I expect to pass the time of day but he’s in a hurry. Bills and junk and this month’s Robot with an article about the Embodiment Hypothesis that I’ll pass along to Roxy. She loves the Embodiment Hypothesis because she loves the human body, although she’d rather call it a Principle so there’s no room for doubt. Myself, I’m more a Descartes man; makes sense to me that you could construct a perfect mind that wouldn’t depend on having a body in the world, but that might be wishful thinking. Not long ago I ran across work by some psychologist who thinks she can build a disembodied mind that would know how to forgive. Imagine that. I lose myself in reading for a while. It’s past noon. Roxy isn’t home. Bubba and Brahms are stretched out in the sun across the floor, so relaxed it makes me mean enough to demand, “What if something’s happened to her?” Brahms flaps his tail but otherwise doesn’t move. Bubba comes and leans against me. It’s not much comfort, but you take what you can get.

singularity 11 That frosty twilight decades ago when Roxy came home after being gone all day in the woods, her warm red coat was soaked all down the front and on the sleeves. After the seventeenth birthday party I’d just thrown her, she and Ralph Gibson were going together, but she’d made a point of telling me they wouldn’t be doing “it” for a while yet. Not for the first time, I wondered if the instinct to use sex as power is primal or if we pick it up as we move through the world. This is still a dangerous and beguiling line of thought, and, mind you, I’m not look- ing for an answer. She was hours later than I’d expected and my dinner was ruined. When I saw she was bruised and crying I got even madder at her. She walked right to me, bent forward to keep me from getting wet from her coat, and laid her forehead against my chest. Her hair was cold. She smelled of moonshine and sweat. A tiny yellow pup poked its head out of her collar, startling me so I jumped back and lost that moment of being touched by Roxy. She looked straight at me. “I saw a hoot owl,” she said in an oddly strong voice. “You’re hurt.” “Fell chasing this little guy.” She lifted the pup out of her coat. Back then I wasn’t a dog person anyway, and this was a repulsive thing, more like a rat, nose and eyes streaming. “What’s the matter with it?” “Name’s Peanut.” She glanced at me, trying to be playful for my sake, breaking my heart. “Somebody dumped him out there along Indian Hill Road. He needs a home.” “Roxy – ” “Come on, Goober.” There’s no doubt in my mind I’d have given in if Ralph hadn’t barged into the house right then, yelling, “Goddammit, woman, where you been?” He spun her around by the shoulder, and I put myself between them, and they both yelled at me. Then he saw the pup, and his rough face softened, and he actually said, “Aww.” Roxy was practically batting her lashes at him. “Ain’t he cute, Ralph? I’m gonna keep him.” Ralph had reached out his big finger to touch the pup. Now he

12 melanie tem snatched it back. “Jesus H. Christ, Roxy, it’s got distemper.” She cuddled the mucus-soaked little beast. “Poor thing, don’t worry, I’ll take care of you – ” Ralph grabbed it out of her arms. She went for him like a wildcat, screeching and scratching. He backhanded her, far as I know the first time he hit her. She stumbled backwards into my arms, quite acciden- tally so I tried not to hold her too tight. He wrapped the pup in one of my good dishtowels and kept it well away from his body as he took it out of the house, ordering me to get her in the shower and make sure she really scrubbed and throw away those clothes. It took her a long time to forgive me for holding her back. We heard the gunshot while Roxy was in the shower. Stuffing her red coat, jeans, long underwear, sweatshirts, socks, sneakers into gar- bage bags, I winced when she screamed. Ralph came back in with tears in his eyes. I would never have expected that from him. I started to go to him, but in those days he was still pushing me away, usually not viciously, more the way you’d push away a fawning dog. He sat on the couch with his hands spread on his thighs. “Damn,” he said. “I hated doing that.” Roxy came out of the bathroom, clean clothes, wet hair, and I braced myself for her to let loose a volley of cuss words or attack him even. Instead she just stood looking at him for a minute and then went to sit beside him and wipe away his tears with her shirttail, showing her sweet belly Ralph put his hand on. “Look what you made me do.” “I’m sorry, Ralph,” she crooned back. “I’m so sorry.” Something about that episode with the sick puppy made Roxy give herself to Ralph. She didn’t tell me, but half the town did. She says it was seven years, four months, and twenty-three days that they loved and fought and hurt each other and she left him and went back a dozen times. She wasn’t all victim, a lot of the time she gave as good as she got, but the fights were getting worse and I was scared he was going to kill her if she stayed and kill her if she tried to leave for good. It was Ralph who almost got killed, though. Brakes went out coming

singularity 13 down Indian Hill Road doing seventy. Brand new truck. Broke his neck; he was in the hospital for a long time and in a neck brace for a lot longer. Most of the times I visited him in the hospital or in rehab, Roxy was there. I still keep thinking I should’ve done something, distracted him long enough for her to leave town, something. But we were in some kind of spacetime singularity where everything was contorted and no rules seemed to apply. During that time Ralph would come to my house looking for her and stay when he found me instead. During that time Roxy and I got to be each other’s best friend. They’re a funny kind of civil to each other. They watch each other. She’ll circle around behind him and he’ll move so I’m between them, with this look on his face I don’t see toward anybody else, almost as if he’s afraid of her, almost as if he can’t wait to see what she’ll do next. I don’t ask. I’m pretty sure, whatever it is, it’d be too much to know. Meantime, I don’t especially like it with him. But I can send my mind off someplace, good old Cartesian duality, and he is warm and strong and I never know when he’ll show up and he doesn’t expect anything. Can’t hardly beat that. Maybe that’s why I love uncertainty. Sometimes things go better than you have any reason to expect. But sometimes they go worse, worse than you can imagine. Some- times people do terrible things you’d never have believed of them, and you do your best not to find out what they did. Sometimes you your- self do, and you spend the rest of your life trying not to understand why, just trying to let it be. It’s coming up on one o’clock. Roxy’s not home. When I say I’ll be home by noon, that’s give or take. When she says she’ll be home noon- ish, she means noon straight up. Maybe something’s happened to her in those woods. Or maybe she’s finally found out the Truth about me and she’s outta here. Roxy bought me this black jacket last month for Old Man Wilcox’s funeral. She dressed up like for a cotillion, low-cut spangled sunset- colored gown, highest heels I ever saw, full-length gloves and pale

14 melanie tem orange wrist corsage. I told her I wasn’t going, I had no respects what- soever to pay; she said I had to; I said why; she said so she wouldn’t have to dance with anybody else; I said I never was much of a dancer which wasn’t one hundred percent true; she said, “This one’s been a long time in the making, Goober. Come help me celebrate. For Misty.” Not wanting her to say any more, I went. Now I stuff the jacket’s numerous pockets with apples and trail mix and dog biscuits and my cell phone even though Roxy’s is charging up there on the kitchen table. In case she comes home or Ralph stops by, I leave a note: “Went for a walk. Back soon.” No sense pinning myself down as to where or when, if I even could. “Love,” I add. Brahms opens one eye and closes it again. Bubba is beside himself. Does he sense something about what’s happened to Roxy? I take a minute to add “canine psychology” to the running list on my reading table of things I want to learn about. If I haven’t lost Roxy. If I have lost Roxy, that’ll be what I learn about for the rest of my life. I think her usual route is Indian Hill Road around the mountain. Then after that I guess I’ll try the trails that cut off into the woods, until I find her or it gets too dark or I’m exhausted or permanently lost, one or the other. Bubba trots ahead, nose to the ground. It’s probably rabbits. Or nothing so particular, just the smells of the world. Or Roxy. Following him is as good a plan as any. Indian Hill doesn’t get much traffic. Hearing a vehicle, I step off onto the shoulder for it to pass, see it’s Ralph in the brand new Hummer he’s so proud of. He honks and I wave, for a second losing my breath to his wake. I try a couple of trails before I hit one that instead of just looping back to the road actually heads into the woods. Thinking of hoot owls and snakes, of some people I know, of the woods closing in, of danger and sorrow I can’t even imagine, joy I can imagine, I make myself brave for love and stay with it. Bubba comes to me with a stick as long as he is. I throw it, it bounces off a tree trunk, he loses interest. The trail finally just sort of peters out. It takes longer to get back to the road than I expect, and I’m getting tired.

singularity 15 The next trail angles to the right and up. I’m out of breath in about five seconds. Not playing now, Bubba waits intently beside me until I’m more or less ready to go on, then accepts a biscuit before he bounds off into the woods again. I put one wobbly foot in front of the other. Roxy’s sitting on a log in a clearing so tiny and vague you wouldn’t know it was there if she wasn’t in it. Maybe it wouldn’t be there if she wasn’t in it. By the time I see her she’s already watching me. We smile at each other for the long moments it takes me to get to her and lower myself beside her. The log is wet and I’m instantly uncomfortable. Not for the first time nor the last I say to myself it’s a good thing I love her or I wouldn’t put up with this. She leans against me. She does that sometimes. Murmuring “Hoot owl’s goan gitcha” she wrinkles her nose, makes her mouth all narrow, and hitches up her top lip like people do around here. Bubba’s heard her voice and hurtles out of the trees, licks her face, and races off again. My skin is tingling. Very gently I try, “You saw a hoot owl out here the day you found that puppy.” “Buried him here.” Now I see the mound of pretty rocks, a wooden cross big as your hand stuck in it wrapped with a thick bow of bright red fleece. “Peanut,” I say. She nods. “Old Man Wilcox came along. Remember that rattletrap Chevy of his? Pulled over right about here.” She points up toward the road. “Pretty day, chilly, my hair had ice crystals in it, I was feeling like God’s gift This was before.” “You are,” I say. “God’s gift.” She turns her face into my shoulder and shakes her head once and gets quiet. Bubba trots up to us, nudging one of the rocks out of place. Roxy gets up and goes to set it right and then she comes back. Bubba disappears back into the woods. “Before what? Before you found Peanut?” I don’t really care about the sequence of events, but I want her to keep talking. “Before the rape. Before he raped me.” She sits up straight and pushes her hair out of her eyes. “Before I found Peanut, too. I found Peanut after Old Man Harold Wilcox raped me. I figured he’s the one

16 melanie tem left Peanut to die.” We reach for each other’s hand and hold on tight. “That’s what he said,” she says. “‘Hoot owl’s goan gitcha,’ and I said, ‘Ain’t no hoot owl gonna get me, never,’ and he picked me up like a bale of hay and carried me in here, right about here, and he raped me. Then he said Ralph wouldn’t want me anymore.” No rule I know applies here. I just stay with her in the midst of this singularity that threatens to suck everything in. After a while I say, “You never told me.” “Never told myself. Never said it out loud until right this minute. But it is the truth.” All I know to say is her name, again and again. Roxy’s got more to say now. “For a long time I imagined I’d kill him one day. Worked out all kinds of plans while I was with Ralph. Just one of the million things Ralph never knew. Never noticed I collected owls, either.” Bubba has come back, tired and happy, to flop on the leaves in front of us. I feel Roxy’s body shift as she rests one foot on him. “Just took me a while is all.” Quickly I say, “I love you, Roxy.” “I’m so sorry, Goober.” “What for? It wasn’t your fault.” “We’re not supposed to keep secrets from each other.” I don’t even take a deep breath. “Roxy, listen, I’ve got something to tell you, too.” Roxy the truth-teller speaks up. “No need,” she says. “I want you to know – ” “I already know.” She trails her fingertips down my cheek. “Lowell called.” I freeze. Time and space stop dead. I suppose there could be some- body else named Lowell in the universe. “Lowell Galbreath,” she assures me. “Lowell – ” I have to clear my throat “ – he died of AIDS. He was dying. I couldn’t watch him die. I didn’t want to die. That’s why I – left. That’s how I came to be here. I left him because he was dying.” I have

singularity 17 never before put all those words together one after the other. “Looks like he didn’t. Not for a long time, anyway.” “When did he call?” “Six years ago the tenth of next month.” She smiles a little. “He seemed nice.” “You didn’t tell me.” Maybe some time from now I’ll know what I’m feeling, but more likely not. “He asked me not to. Didn’t want to intrude. Said he had nothing to say to you. Just wanted to know how you were.” “What’d you tell him?” Her hands are cold on the sides of my face. “I told him you’re my best friend.” “You knew the truth for that long and you didn’t leave me? I thought probably – ” “I love you,” she says. “Count on it.” There doesn’t seem anything else to do then but hold each other. Bubba yips in his sleep. The red flag on Peanut’s grave flutters. An owl hoots in the first pearly moments of twilight. I hear myself ask, “What was the name of that girl that took care of Froggy Fogarty?” Quietly and without flinching she tells me. “Lorna.” “Ah,” I say, “Lorna.” “She didn’t take care of him,” Roxy says matter-of-factly. “Didn’t do her job. Let him stay cold and hungry and dirty, and then let him die. Told me so herself. Then she took his money.” After a moment she adds, “That ain’t right. Couldn’t let it go.” If I ask whatever happened to Lorna, she’ll tell me the truth, and then I’ll know so much I won’t know a thing. In my arms Roxy is flesh and bones, sweet hair and deep sturdy breath, perfect spirit, and in her arms I am a man of substance with an active, substantial mind. There’s no predicting what will happen next. I’m thinking life doesn’t get much better than this. But you never know.

18 melanie tem a As a child I used to bring broken things home. After my mother upped and left us, my father and I moved around a lot. Every couple of months, we’d hurriedly load up his old Ford Cortina Estate with the boxes and bags that constituted our lives and drive away to another district, another town, another county. When I was very young my old man used to tell me he was a research scientist. He’d probably read about it in a magazine or a book he’d found in one of the flats we lived in; he didn’t know what a research scientist was any more than I did. In truth he was a criminal, one of the low level ones. But he was good at it. He’d go where the deals could be made, where the stolen merchandise could be shifted; he knew which fights were thrown and which horses to back, and who to sidle up to in the smoky snooker halls in the back streets of Tottenham or Rusholme. We’d live in those desolate streets on the outer ring roads of towns, above launderettes or curry houses or tattoo parlours; dirty flats that rattled when a train thundered across the bridge above; or shitty hotel rooms with beds covered by sheets stiff with stains left by former occupants; walls clotted with damp and broken windows plugged with crisp, yellowed newspapers. I’d dig in in one place only to be woken up in the middle of the night by my old man urgently throwing our clothes into my mother’s old pink suitcase, and hurrying me down back steps and down narrow alleyways, hearing men hammering on our doors, screaming my dad’s name. I did whatever it took to make my peripatetic life work. I didn’t get to go to school much, so I never made any lasting bonds with other children. Bolting in the middle of the night isn’t conducive to making

the only broken blonde 19 lasting relationships. It only jars the wiring in your head until you start to see the world differently to everyone else. It makes you strange, it makes you devious; later it only makes you yearn for what you see everyone else has. What you do with that feeling is the making of you. So at some point I started to bring broken things home. My days were long and wide and empty – my old man would either be out on business or in his room sleeping, so I was left to my own devices much of the time. Every town we stayed in – Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Leicester, London – began to look the same; they all look the damn same on the perimeter. It’s the demarcation line between the money and the marginalised: immigrants, the poor, and the criminal class. It was where I was stranded in the uncertain geography of my life. I found what I wanted in skips outside empty shop fronts, or in vacant yards, or on waste land. Sometimes I’d even venture into junk shops and steal something that had caught my eye. Broken things need extra parts to bring them back to life, after all. I brought bicycles home, old radios, furniture, portable TVs, clocks, even birds with broken wings. Anything that I could fix. This was of course before the Internet, so I had to steal books from local libraries or second hand book stores: even then I was my father’s son. I’d learn what I could with the limited skills at my disposal and fix these broken things while my old man made his deals, cheered on the horses, or slept with his whores. And then I’d leave them behind when we did our moonlight flit. There’d be no room in the car for those objects I’d toiled over. I let them go. I knew not to get attached.

I first met Abigail Walker the day I drove her home from the hospital. Her boyfriend had put her there. It was my first week on the job working for the boyfriend’s family. The Marstons. I was hired help. I ended up driving a gleaming Jaguar XJ, with a 5-litre V8 engine, and ran pointless errands, or ferried the lush of a wife from their mansion in Haywards Heath to Claridges for afternoon tea, and back. She smelled of gin and Guerlain. She wore little Oscar De La Renta frocks that rode up her fleshy thighs on the backseat, and she smiled slyly when I glanced at them in the rear view mirror. The husband, Gerald Marston,

20 simon avery was a stiff joyless man who looked at me like I was a fresh turd on his kitchen counter. He took business meetings in Chelsea, where he was liaising with various grant agencies to procure sponsorship for an exhibition at his art gallery on Kings Road. Sometimes he fraternised with politicians and minor TV celebrities in the Capital. Sometimes I even dropped him at a cheap hotel in Pimlico or Bloomsbury where he did fraternising of the more horizontal variety. Picking up Abigail Walker was one of my first real errands of sub- stance. The Marston family, wrapped in their private little worlds, hardly seemed to have noticed her absence, and would hardly acknow­ ledge her return. It would stand her in good stead for what happened afterwards. Even Damien Marston, her fiancé, and the person who’d put her there, couldn’t manage to rouse himself from his hectic life of driving his BMW around Brighton or London or injuring girlfriends. He didn’t seem to have a job that I could discern. Abigail Walker was beautiful of course. Trust me. In my place, you’d have felt the same, felt that unexpected catch in your chest that feels like you might never breathe again. I couldn’t tell what it was that day; all I can tell you is perhaps it was an amalgamation of things that lined up in time to knock me on my back. She had large, green eyes and the reddest fingernails. I wondered briefly how long she’d spent this morning painting them, expecting someone other than a stranger to show them off to. She was brittle too; she gave me no more than an indifferent sidelong glance when I knocked on the door of the private room she’d been recuperating in for the last couple of weeks. She rose slowly and started to gather up the glossy magazines fanned across the bed, slipped them inside a large Prada bag and seated it next to the suitcase standing by the door. She didn’t speak, but I realised that she was perhaps unconsciously giving me her best side in those first few moments; not to impress me, but because the other side – the right side of her face – was where the scar was. And it was some scar. There was no hiding it but it was new enough for her to think it could be concealed by carefully standing at an angle, with her long blonde hair falling forward, or in oblique light for long enough. It ran from beneath her right eye and past her nose,

the only broken blonde 21 bisected her lips and ran down over her chin and on, below her collar to who knew where. Not me. Not yet. “I’ve come to collect you,” I said. “I work for the Marstons.” She didn’t respond. She gathered up the medication she’d been prescribed and slid it into the Prada bag, slipped it over her shoulder and then said: “Take the suitcase. It’s too heavy for me.” She led the way out of the pale, sun-washed room without a backward glance. With the suitcase rolling along behind me, I followed her little red dress down the cool, quiet hospital corridors. Abigail’s heels were loud and deliberate. I was gradually hypnotised by the seam of her stockings and the easy sway of her behind. She didn’t speak again until we’d loaded the bags into the back of the Jag, and I was opening up the V8 engine on the a272 in between speed cameras. Just as I was contemplating switching the radio on, I sensed Abigail shifting in the back; a crossing and uncrossing of the legs. I could hear the static crackle of her stockings. She wanted to speak but didn’t know how to break the studied glacial silence she’d offered me since meeting her at the hospital. I glanced into the rear view mirror to help her out. She caught my eye for the first time and said reluctantly: “Do we have to go straight back there?” Her eyes were extraordinarily green, full of a life that her face seemed to have forgotten about. I studied them for a beat too long and then, shifting my gaze back onto the road, said, “No, Ms Walker. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.” I’ll take you wherever you want to go. She smiled then and leaned forward on the leather upholstery until I could smell the crisp scent at her throat; see the morning light glancing off her alabaster skin, the scar on her face, a road leading down to an uncertain paradise beyond her collar. “Is Brighton too far?” she asked. “I’d very much like to look at the sea right now.”

It took us less than an hour in the Jag. By the time we reached the coast, the air was still cool, but you could sense the heat building up. The horizon was smudged with clouds but by the time I’d found a place to turn around on the coastal road and return to park near the pier, the

22 simon avery sky had magically turned a perfect blue, and the sea was sparkling with diamonds of light. Already children were running onto the beach, squealing with de- light, while adults with time to spare were lying stunned like lizards under brightly coloured parasols or on laid out towels. By the time I’d parked the car, the air was close and warm on the skin, and the sun so fierce, I had to reach into the glove box for my sun- glasses. I opened the door for Abigail and glanced away as one perfect leg emerged from the car. She’d already slipped large sunglasses on that covered less of the scar than she’d probably have liked, and then a large wide brimmed hat and scarf that made her look like one of those dangerous blondes from a Hitchcock movie. I wondered how long it might take her to accept the scars for what they were, or if she’d simply disappear into another private clinic in a week or two and emerge like a butterfly from a chrysalis, as if the violence they represented had never happened. I trailed after her as she window shopped in The Lanes, but then suddenly after an hour or so, she tired of it entirely, and we walked back to the seafront. I’d taken off my jacket and loosened my tie. I could feel sweat prickling at my hairline and under my arms. Abigail still looked immaculate, but half way back she suddenly fell in step with me and said, “Every time I catch sight of my self, of my reflection, I think there’s a crack there – a crack in every window, in every mirror. And then I remember that the flaw is me, is in my face, and it makes me short of breath. It’s like a little electric shock, to look at yourself and not see the person you expect staring back at you.” I didn’t respond immediately. I wasn’t yet sure of the formality of my role here. I knew what I thought, but rich people rarely pay the hired help for their second-rate opinions. But then she said, “Don’t say ‘What scar?’ or ‘I hadn’t noticed’.” She smiled ruefully. “If you do, I’d have to kill you and throw you off the pier.” “I definitely won’t say that then,” I offered, and hoped that was the end of it. It was for a while. When we reached the seafront, she bought us ice creams, and I followed her as we stepped lightly over the pebbled beach, past the tourists, and down to where the sea was licking at the

the only broken blonde 23 sand. I fell in behind her again, as the ice cream melted over my fingers. When we’d moved away from the throngs of tourists, she paused long enough to pull at the straps of her Louboutin shoes. Without saying anything she passed them to me, then, resting one hand on my arm for support, she slid down her stockings, rolling them beneath her fingers until they crackled against her skin, her eyes locked with mine. I realised I’d stared at her porcelain thighs for too long, and looked out instead at the sea. I could hear the waves roaring in my ears, pacing the throb of blood through my body. Then she was done. She took the shoes from me and held them dangling from her fingers. I thought she’d forgotten about me, but after a moment she said, “When I was a little girl, my mother used to bring me down from London to Brighton on the train. This was where she was born. “I wouldn’t sleep the night before,” she said. “It was like all my Christmases come at once. I loved the train journey. I loved watching the long shabby backyards of London give way to fields and trees and sky. And then my mum would say, ‘Soon you’ll see the sea’, and I’d repeat it to myself until it sounded like the train: Soon-I’ll-see-the-sea. Soon-I’ll-see-the-sea…” She stood at the water’s edge and waited for the sea to ripple around her bare toes. She looked down at them, wiggled them a little as the water ran over her skin. She glanced back at me, a few feet up the beach with my shirt sleeves rolled up, looking stiff, trying not to stare at her. “I don’t suppose you want to join me?” she asked. “Throw off your shoes and socks and caution to the wind?” “It wasn’t part of the job description to be honest…” I volunteered. She shrugged. “Please yourself.” She took off the hat then, and the sunglasses. She tossed them behind her and they landed between us. She lifted her bare face to the sky and her red dress whipped in the breeze. I was already imagining myself naked with her, our bodies wrapped together, my palm mapping the scar. I wanted to feel its smooth new flesh under my hand and go on a journey with it. “We first came to Brighton the weekend after my dad left home,” Abigail said then. “He was a musician. He played drums in a jazz band. They were gone for months at a time, touring Germany, France,

24 simon avery Belgium… My mum went with him before I was born, but after she had me, it was impossible to have both worlds, so she chose the one that included me. “I was five when he left. I have a memory of him standing over me, kissing my forehead, saying goodbye in the night.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t sound right. It was probably a dream; maybe I made it out of old photographs and things my mother used to say.” She paused. “He was a violent man. To my mother, sometimes to me…” Then she changed subject, and it took me a moment to see where she was going. “Sometimes I’d hear people talking in my mother’s bed- room at night,” she said. “I’d hear them quite clearly through the walls. Sometimes I’d get out of bed and press my ear to the wall. Even though he’d been gone for years, I sometimes heard my dad’s voice; sometimes he’d be whispering lovely things, beautiful things. I’d want to jump off my bed and rush in, just to see him again, saying these sweet things to my mother. And then I’d hear someone else. I heard an old woman shouting about the colours of the drapes or that all the roses were dead. Or I’d hear another man’s voice say: ‘Do you like it when I fuck you like that? Or like this?’ And I’d hear my dad again, and the woman, and then my mother again finally.” Abigail crouched down on her haunches and pressed a palm into the sand, then lifted it up to stare at the imprint she’d left. Then the water came and washed it away. “I was fourteen when I finally realised that there was only my mother in the other room. She was talking to faces that she saw in the wallpaper, in the pattern of the carpet.” I stood apart from her as she crouched in the sand, the water reach- ing the hem of her dress. I didn’t speak. “Sometimes you want to just get lost,” she said finally. “Put some distance from the person you ended up being.” She squinted up at me. I was standing, silhouetted by the sun. “I think my dreams were always too big. So big that when the little ones happened to come true, I didn’t see them happening…” Her eyes were red. She must have realised too late, and slipped the sunglasses back into place, then the hat followed, the disguise, the mask to hide behind complete again. I wanted to say something to

the only broken blonde 25 her suddenly as she came back into my orbit, but couldn’t find the words: sometimes the things we want for ourselves and for others is impossible to say. Words run out. By the time we returned to the car, the mask was back in place; it had nothing to do with the hat and the sunglasses. That infinitely brittle façade I’d first been shown in the hospital. The ice maiden with the cracked face. The dangerous blonde. We returned to the car, and I drove her back to the bosom of the Marston family.

After that day in the sun, I spent the next locked in the city, where I felt safer; hemmed in by its walls and bridges, its dirty river, its hard and unyielding torrent of strangers. I lived like my father had, cheaply and quickly. Never in one place for too long, moving from one address to the next, or sleeping on people’s couches and carpets, in the back seat of the car, in cheap hotels. I still took broken things home too, in case you’re wondering. I liked clocks and watches; I’d gathered a fair amount of tools over the years for whatever I’d found, and a good amount of knowledge besides. I fixed cars for friends; I opened up their TVs and thrust my hands into their workings, saw broken wirelesses and computers as jigsaws I could piece together in the empty hours of the night when I couldn’t sleep. I turned junk into antiques and turned a profit too. Old habits die hard. But there was a hollow inside me and it followed me around all day until I sat down in my favourite watering hole in the backstreets of Camden. On my third drink I realised that I could give the hollow a name: Abigail Walker. My sleep had been filled with her. The alabas- ter skin, the red nails and lips, the extraordinary green eyes, the long blonde hair falling over that scar… And that scar: in dreams it was everywhere; on everybody’s skin as the damage done, and from there, it spread like a disease, splitting the dead end roads and wasted bodies of London. It was the scar on everything, on every life I’d ever known. •

26 simon avery Two nights later and I’d been called back to the Marston place to pick up Damien Marston and Abigail Walker to take them out. Once I’d parked my heap around the back of the property near the service entry, I discovered Marston waiting for me. He was carefully dressed, his hair carefully coiffed into a somewhat jarring quiff, but his face let him down; there was something empty in his eyes and something else again of the wounded in his heavy lower lip and over-developed jaw that left his little crooked lower row of teeth exposed. He looked like a caveman in a Hermes polo shirt. He was smoking a Gauloises cigarette on the gravel path that ran around the huge outbuilding that housed the indoor swimming pool. Inside, lit by shimmering blue shadows, was the old lady. As I encountered Marston she was perched on the diving board with a G and T in one hand and a cigarillo in the other. She looked good and drunk. The all in one swimsuit did her no favours but Damien was giving her the kind of rapt attention a gynaecologist gives his patients. She seemed to have forgotten that she’d intended to go for a late night dip until her son gripped his cigarette between his teeth with a hiss and hammered on the window. Roused from her torpor, she raised the glass in our general direction and then stepped off the board and into space. She seemed to hover there for a moment with the tumbler in one hand and the cigarillo in the other, but then she plummeted heav- ily into the water, sending thick waves of chlorinated water rolling up over the edges of the pool. I waited, holding my breath, searching the shifting shadows beneath the surface of the water. Nothing. Marston exhaled a plume of smoke circles, seemingly unmoved by his mother’s eccentricities. When she emerged finally, rising up at the opposite end of the pool with the now empty tumbler in one hand and the extin- guished cigarillo in the other, she turned and smiled at us vacantly. Marston turned, slightly bored, slightly disgusted, slightly aroused; all of the above. “Stupid bitch,” he hissed. “Should she be left on her own in that condition?” He shrugged. “She isn’t pissed. That’s the sad fact. That’s just her normal manner…” He turned and faced me. “You’ve taken her into London for her afternoon fuck-dates. I ask you: Is she like that all the

the only broken blonde 27 time or is she like that all the time?” I didn’t respond, but he wasn’t wrong. She was breaststroking her way through a length of the pool. But after a moment’s thought, I said, “I think maybe she wants attention.” Marston took the Gauloises and threw it to the gravel; ground it out with the heel of his loafers. “Yeah? Maybe she just wants putting out of her fucking misery.” He looked at me, and I saw that his eyes were swimming with something chemical. His pupils were dilated. His hands were shaking. His lips were stuck to his gums. “What do you say, man?” he asked. “Put her out of her fucking misery, yeah?” When he realised I wasn’t about to rise to it, he began to cackle. The laughter eventually doubled him over until there were tears in his eyes and spittle cording from his lips to the lapels of his Gant blazer. “I’ll stick with the driving, sir,” I said. “If that’s OK.” Marston looked perplexed momentarily, then, after a second, real- ised where he was, what his intentions were. “Yes,” he said firmly. “Get the fucking Bentley. No – ” He reached out and grabbed my shoul- ders. “The Jag. No – ” He closed his eyes, clenched his jaw, and then stretched his mouth wide as if testing the limits of an unfamiliar face. “No. Get the fucking Bentley.” He spun around in the dark and I heard the gravel crackle beneath his expensive heels. “I’ll get the bitch,” he said. “Then we’ll fucking motor…”

The ‘bitch’ was coked off her eyeballs too. Abigail Walker smelled of cigarettes and perfume, her face split down the middle in the moonlight, her body fluid like a cool stream in a blue Alexander McQueen dress. I was stupidly glad to see her; my heart jolted every time I looked at her as she crossed the drive to the Bentley. The two of them slithered across the leather seats in the back of the Bentley, a Continental Flying Spur Series 51; I pulled away out of the curving gravel drive with a measure of reverence to the car, and then, as we passed the iron gates and left the Marston estate, I opened her up and slipped away into the night. She pressed me back into the seat. She was silent and cool; she almost made me forget about the girl

28 simon avery being felt up in the back seat. Almost. “Where to?” I asked, glancing into the rear view mirror. Marston was sliding his hand along Abigail’s thighs, feathering her neck with wet kisses, pushing the light silk higher and higher until I had to peel my eyes away from the mysteries of her porcelain skin. Marston had an address written on a slip of paper and he withdrew from Abigail long enough to pass it across the seat to me. I glanced at it as I took the Bentley away from the quiet suburban roads and onto the a272 where I could open her up. We were heading for South Croydon. “We’re picking up a friend,” Marston said, his head swaying in the rear view mirror. “Then we’ll be going someplace else.” I heard the creak of leather as he reclined back in the seat and returned to his molestation. I wanted to catch a glimpse of Abigail’s broken face, find some sense of affinity from the other day, but she was enveloped in the folds of shifting dark as we slid between the cars on the road. I returned my eyes to the white stripes sliding beneath the wheels. The address led us to the sort of area in Croydon that I’d grown accustomed to in my youth; that hinterland between the cosiness of the suburbs and the glacial cool and eternal rush of the big city. It was all Turkish kebab houses, taxi companies hidden up staircases, Asian corner stores encased in wire, off-licenses and tattoo parlours. It felt like home. It wasn’t the kind of area you wanted to park a Bentley. When Marston fell out of the car to retrieve his other companion for the night, he looked momentarily out of place in these dirty streets. His clothes were too well tailored, his shoes too clean. His manner shouted spoiled little rich kid. But even if he drew attention to himself here, there was something in his eyes – and not just the coke – that allowed him to carry off the situation and keep any chancers away; something reckless and dangerous, and something else besides: the sense that at some point in his life, something had come loose in his head. I could see it. I’d seen it before in the faces of the people my old man used to deal with. A lifetime of bad wiring. Neurons sparking bad decisions, crazy decisions. I saw all that and then looked away, my hands stiff around the steering wheel. After he’d vanished behind a shabby door that sat beside a massage

the only broken blonde 29 parlour, I heard Abigail shift in her seat. I finally angled the rear view mirror to find her nestling in the shadows. I saw the scar first, its ridges catching the sodium glow of the street lamps. And her exposed thighs. She’d left the dress pushed up almost to her waist. I felt my eyes shifting from the scar to that alabaster skin, all the way up to the Promised Land, then caught myself and looked away. “How long is he going to be?” I asked, eyeing a gang of Asian youths stuffed into a crappy Citroen at the traffic lights. The bass thrum from their speakers made my heart pound quicker. “Bentleys and this area don’t go together too well.” I glimpsed the green eyes briefly, still swimming on other currents, but she was leaning forward now, her hands gripping the back of my seat. “Five minutes,” she said in my ear, and my skin prickled at the proximity of her breath. “He’s bringing someone along to play with u s …” The traffic lights changed but the Citroen remained. I studied the windows, the faces inside. “We may not have that long,” I said. “Are you scared?” she whispered, still close to my ear. “I thought you were tough. A tough guy…” She ran a hand across my shoulder. “You look rough. Hard. Don’t tell me you’re not…” I didn’t respond. I felt frozen by events expanding beyond my hori- zons, broad as they were. “You try to dress nice to ferry us rich folk around, don’t you? It doesn’t work. But there’s a hard body under that cheap suit, I can tell…” Her hand slipped over my shoulder and tugged loose my tie, slipped inside my shirt. Her breath smelled of booze. “There’s some- thing about you, something in your eyes. But it’s not violence. That’s not what it is, is it?” “No,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. Her hand ran along my chest. I glanced across at the shabby door that Marston had disappeared through, then at the vibrating Citroen. “It’s not violence.” I shifted forward in my seat and said: “Maybe we should keep this strictly professional, Ms Walker. I may work for your boyfriend’s family, but I’m not the main attraction here, no matter how cheap my suit is. And I’m not going to listen while you sit in your reserved seats with your

30 simon avery popcorn, passing judgement on the people in the stalls.” I heard her laugh. “Do you hate rich people? Is that it? Because you’re poor?” “Not because I’m poor,” I said. The Citroen pulled away finally. I watched the faces pass me by in slow motion. “Because of their cer- tainty.” “What kind of certainty?” “The kind that thinks it can have whatever it wants, even when money isn’t involved,” I said. Marston emerged finally with a girl in tow. She looked small, young, stupid. “That kind of certainty,” I said. Once they were back in the Bentley, I started the engine again and said to the rear view mirror, “Where are we going now?”

We stopped at Hickstead Services on the a23, the kind with a cheap Travelodge hotel, a Burger King and a Little Chef. We were less than ten miles from the Marston home. I watched as Marston tumbled out of the car again, followed by Abigail and the girl from Croydon, whom I’d discovered was called, somewhat dubiously, Candie. There was a lot of flesh on display, all the way across the car park until Candie made a point of freezing in the headlights of a tired truck driver and tugging her outrageously short dress down to preserve whatever was left of her modesty. She seemed, from what I’d gathered, earnest or dumb, depending on how charitable you felt, and young. I was hoping she was eighteen, but I wasn’t entirely sure. She made Abigail seem like an entirely different species; an exotic bird of paradise beside a common sparrow. They tottered in their high heels across the parking area and into the hotel lobby, catching the attention of weary and bewildered motorway travellers, eager only for rest, coffee and cheap nourishment. Once they’d disappeared from view, I felt a little deflated, like the guy left behind after the party was over. I also felt a little exposed sitting in a Bentley. I got out, locked the car up and went and bought myself a coffee from the Burger King, brought it back outside and leaned against the bonnet, sipping at it and staring up into the starry

the only broken blonde 31 night. Every so often there’d be the frenetic sound of a truck hauling itself down towards the coast, and then the silence would return, and I could hear the blood cooling in my veins. I glanced across at the Travelodge, at the windows, some of them lit, some of them dark. I watched Marston emerge in one window and draw the curtains. I tried not to wonder what kind of activities they were engaged in. I could guess, but I preferred not to. I watched a family arrive with their bags stuffed in the boot and on a roof rack: bicycles, suitcases, tents and sleeping bags; the whole thing. Dad looked tired, but he was first out of the car and hurrying across to the Burger King for a piss and a black coffee. The kids were drowsy, their hair awry from sleeping on the back seat. It was a pretty picture; it wasn’t something I knew a whole lot about, although I knew all about being bundled in and out of cars at all times of the night. I saw the scene play itself out with several variations for about three hours, all told. By that time it was after one in the morning and I’d worked my way through two more coffees, something called a Whopper, and a pack of Benson and Hedges. I saw Abigail first; she emerged from the Travelodge, smoothing down her dress, and with her shoes in her hand, the way they had been on Brighton beach. I could see how her hair had turned into a bird's nest at the back. I knew how it’d gotten that way. She was hobbling; I noticed that too. At some point in the last three hours, she’d sustained a new injury. I had a pretty good idea how that had happened too. Marston came trailing after her, slipping his wallet into his jacket pocket. His shirt was hanging over his immaculate trousers, but otherwise he looked impeccable. He smoothed his hair back over his skull self-consciously, and then found his stride. When he fell into step with Abigail, he took hold of her arm roughly and barked something I didn’t catch in her ear. I felt my hackles rise, but remained where I was. I went across to the litter bin and emptied the burger carton and the coffee containers into it. I straightened my tie and waited, watched. By the time Marston and Abigail reached the Bentley, it was clear that Candie wasn’t going to be joining us for the return trip. But that slipped from my mind when I saw how Abigail’s right eye was already

32 simon avery swelling over, forcing it closed. Marston let go of her arm with a final shove towards the car, and then caught my look. The coke had worn off but there was still that look of reptile danger in his eyes. They were bloodshot too, and I could see that whatever had happened in that motel room, the arousal of it hadn’t left him. He caught me staring. “What?” he yelled and his voice echoed around the court. “What? What the fuck is your problem?” I took them home, stealing glances at the bruise growing around Abigail’s eye, at the way she kept shifting in her seat, wincing in pain. I watched them stumble away like a drunk and drowsy couple at the end of a night on the tiles; watched them go back to that private, fucked- up little world under the Marston roof. I parked the Bentley back in the garage, then fished out my own keys and got back into my own heap. It was like sitting in a tin can after the Bentley. I started it up and pulled out, listening to the crackle of tyres on the gravel drive. In the rear view mirror, I saw lights come on in the Marston bedrooms. I drove away. I’d intended to return to the city. It was late now. After two a.m. But I couldn’t get the girl out of my mind. ‘Candie.’ The last time I’d seen her she was trying redundantly to preserve her modesty in the car park of a service station. I could see the blonde curls falling into her face. Too much make-up, and not enough experience to know who the bad guys were, and how to avoid them, even when they waved their wallets in your face. So, no, I couldn’t just drive home. I’d never sleep knowing that I hadn’t checked. I went south again and back to Hickstead Services on the a23. Very little had changed. There were fewer lights on in the Travelodge now when I parked up, and the fast food places were working the skeleton crew. Just those trucks flying past to break the silence. What is there to say? She was still there, in a motel room that smelled like an animal had been cooped up in it for too long. I walked into that Travelodge like I was a resident; I didn’t even look at the receptionist. I counted the doors: earlier I’d watched Marston close the drapes in the fourth window to the left of the entrance. At the fourth door I paused

the only broken blonde 33 for a second, looking quickly left and right then pushed down on the handle, hoping it hadn’t been locked with the key card by Marston. The door swung open and I went in, flipped on the light, catching a whiff of that caged animal smell. The bed was in disarray, the sheets torn and shorn from the bed. It was stained with semen and blood. I flashed on a slide show of Marston with Abigail and Candie on the bed in a variety of positions; I saw them tied and beaten; I saw the coke being snorted off bare skin, and the animal sex that ensued… I shook the visuals from my mind and found the girl curled up in the wardrobe, shivering, bleeding, weeping, and unable to stand, terrified. I knelt down and spoke quietly to her. She struggled at first, her eyes wide. She tried to scratch at me with nails already coated with blood. She’d lost control of her bowels at some point, and she was covered in shit. I waited her out until she recognised me and realised that I meant her no harm. After half an hour I got her from the wardrobe and into the shower. I had to hold her up. She couldn’t stand, she couldn’t sit; she was too damaged. I got wet, but she got clean eventually, and then I covered her in fresh towels. I stripped the bed and threw the sheets into the wardrobe, then carried Candie across to the bed and lay her down. I asked her if I should call an ambulance, but she shook her head. “No,” she whispered, “I’ll be fine. It’s always this way.” There was money on the bedside cabinet that Marston had left for her. What a fucking saint he was. When she fell asleep, I lay on the floor beside her, and then took her home to her flat in South Croydon in the morning. She told me her name was Isobel at some point. I told her it was a much prettier name than Candie.

Inevitably, Abigail and I ended up in a strange bed together not long after that. I was called to the Marston house five days later to take her into London for a shopping trip. The swollen eye had been treated and covered with make-up, but it didn’t matter much. She was still sporting the sunglasses and the hat, and it only made me want to study that scar even more. She trailed me up and down Bond Street; she considered a tiny purse from Bottega Veneta that cost more than I’d earned in the last twenty years, then, deciding against it, ventured into

34 simon avery Chanel, Chopard, Rolex and then Tiffany and Co. But at the end of it all, she walked away in her perfect heels with nothing, and I felt like I was playing a part in a bad romantic comedy that could only afford a lead with a damaged face. We were back in the car and attempting to swim against the tide of London traffic near Leicester Square when she leaned forward from the back seat of the Jag to tell me to find somewhere to park. I glanced at her in the rear view mirror, somewhat incredulous, but she’d already fallen back into her seat and was watching the crowds in the late after- noon sun, a finger running along the ridge of her scar, down past her lips and over her chin. I finally found somewhere to park and said, “What now?” She said, “It’s time for a drink.” I locked the car and followed as she led us through Covent Garden, past the crowds and out the other side to another Travelodge on Drury Lane. I’d expected the Waldorf Hilton or the Savoy, but instead we settled into a bar that seemed to have survived the seventies untouched. She returned from the bar with a glass of wine and a Coke for me. She sat in her sunglasses and hat and looked as out of place as a woman could look anywhere. There were a few minutes where we sat sipping at our drinks, glancing up at the people checking into their cheap hotel rooms, lugging backpacks and overnight suitcases. Then, after a loud American family arrived, our attention felt forced away from strangers and back to each other. I waited. It wasn’t my place to start small talk. I was an employee. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, “about that night at the hotel.” She stared into her glass, scratched at the plastic table. “About the girl. And Damien.” I studied what I could of her face. “You haven’t anything to apolo- gise for. What you do in your own time is your business. I’m just the chauffeur.” “You went back, didn’t you?” I was surprised. I hesitated before I responded. “Yeah, I went back. You left her there.” I looked away finally. “In that condition.” “You learn not to argue with Damien,” Abigail said. She removed her

the only broken blonde 35 sunglasses finally, and then, after some hesitation, the hat too. Her eye was still swollen, still bruised purple. “I gathered that. I suspect he doesn’t hear the word ‘no’ very often.” She smiled. “You’d be surprised. He’s heard it a lot recently.” I let that settle for a moment and filed it away for future examination. “Was she OK?” Abigail asked. “Candie, I mean.” “Her name is Isobel,” I said a little too sharply. “She’ll be OK if she stays away from your boyfriend.” Abigail nodded and then in the momentary lull, I saw her eyes fill up with tears that she struggled not to shed. “I sometimes wish I hadn’t met him. I wish I was still a poor little girl from South London. I wish I was working in a shop in Brighton, going to clubs at night and dancing, meeting dull, stupid boys who just want to follow me around and disappear when I get bored of them.” “You could leave,” I suggested. “You don’t seem to be getting a good deal out of it all. He doesn’t even let you use his credit card, consider- ing that we went in every shop on Bond Street and you didn’t buy a thing…” She smiled to herself for a moment. “It used to be different. We met over a perfume counter. I worked at a department store and he was buying perfume for someone else. Later he told me he forgot about her as soon as he set eyes on me.” She sniffed, pushed the mascara back in place. “It just sounds like a lousy line, saying it like that, but it was more than anyone had ever offered me before. And I don’t mean the money. I had no idea who he was or what he had then. He was just another guy then… “And he came around every day. He said the kindest things, was sweet and caring. He met my mother before she died, and he seemed to know how to talk to her.” She glanced quickly at me with tears in her eyes again. “He was all this, so how was I to know?” When I didn’t respond, she said, “But it’s different now. Things have changed. You don’t know what they’re like, that family. They’re not what they seem, any of them.” “They seem like rich people,” I said. “They step over people to get to where they want to go.”

36 simon avery She shook her head. “It’s not just that. And it’s not just Damien. I thought it was just an act; the son of a rich man, going off the rails and hanging around with lowlifes just to rebel against his father. But it isn’t an act. He likes to hurt people. And not just women. It’s anyone; anyone whose face he doesn’t like.” I wanted to ask when he’d decided he didn’t like her face, but let it go. Instead I said, “But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?” “Gerald Marston worked his way up from a council estate some- where, but he did it by doing more than stepping on people. He passes himself off as a respectable businessman but under the surface there’s something bad, corrupt…” She stopped and seemed to consider that she’d said too much, as if somehow one of the Marston clan might know that she was telling tales out of school. Then she said quietly, “But something has changed in the past few months. I’ve seen the accountants arriving most days to go over the finances, and I’ve heard talk of insolvency.” “The empire is crumbling just as I find myself in gainful employ- ment,” I said. I glanced away, then back at her. “Just my luck…” She didn’t respond to that so I let it go. Instead I started talking about anything that filled my mind. I started talking about the bro- ken things; it makes it easier not to talk about the rest of my life; it derails all those hard questions about childhood and lack of schooling. Something must have struck a chord, and I realised for the first time that she was another one of those things. There was more to learn about just how broken she was, but for now I mistakenly thought she might just be something else I could take home with me and put all the pieces back together again. But life isn’t like that. I finished my drink and looked out of the window at a lonely con- crete courtyard. I felt like we were nowhere, weightless, lost in time. When she finally spoke, it was in carefully measured tones. “He carries a knife, a switchblade. One night we were out and he was angry about something. I don’t know why. He doesn’t need a reason. His mood can just change in the middle of a sentence. We left a club and then went to a hotel like this one to have sex. He likes to fuck in different places to keep it feeling fresh. But that night he was different. He made me

the only broken blonde 37 get naked, and then tied my hands behind my back, blindfolded me. He took more coke and before I realised what was happening, he had grabbed me and was marching me out of the door and into the cor- ridor. I thought it was funny at first, almost a turn-on, but then we got into the elevator and he took me down to the lobby, marched me into reception and out into the street. I could hear him laughing; I could hear the people around us. It was raining and I was naked, cold, humiliated. I got angry, started to fight him, and started screaming…” Abigail paused as her voice cracked. She held my gaze and then continued. “He took off the blindfold and stuffed it in my mouth. He picked me up and forced me into a quiet street where there was no one around and he raped me. When I got loose, I clawed at his eyes. And then he took out the knife and ran it down my face, all the way down…” She stopped then, and the world seemed to come back. It was harsh and loud; it was tourists and talking and sirens and useless words. I leaned forward and fell short of taking her hand, but stared at those long red fingernails. I thought, don’t get involved. I thought, don’t say anything else. Just drive her home like the hired help you are. I said: “So walk away.” And I said: “I could help you.”

She wanted to be hurt in bed. We went up to the room she paid for in cash from her purse. We stood close in the elevator and I inhaled her, pressed my face into her hair and let the electricity of proximity do its work. That hesitation that leads to helpless touching and being touched. By the time we were in the corridor and wrestling with the key card in the door, we could barely breathe with the sudden desper- ate urge to have hands under clothes and on bare flesh. She pulled me into the room and said, “Don’t you want to know how far the scar goes?” She turned and crawled across the bed and I was hypnotised by that seam on her stockings and the pale flesh of her thighs as she fell onto her back and pulled the dress up above her waist and then over her head. She wasn’t wearing any underwear and I could see the answer to the question I hadn’t ever really asked. Don’t you want to know how far the scar goes? All the way was the answer. All the way down, from below her right

38 simon avery eye, down past her nose, over her lips and chin, into the curve of her throat and down, between her breasts and belly and ending an inch or so above the pubic area. I didn’t linger on the scar however. I was too busy throwing off my own clothes, drinking in her naked skin as she twisted on the bed and slipped her fingers between her legs and inside of herself. I barely took in the room but at the back of my head was a small voice asking if this was the hotel that Damien Marston had marched her out of naked, then raped and scarred her. That same small voice was asking how a woman could relive that tale to a stranger and then throw off her clothes and demand sex. I ignored it. I was a better man, I told myself. Every man likes to think that they’re better than the last one, or the next, or the other. In truth we’re much the same: vain, confused, afraid of rejection or humiliation, eager to be better than we think we are but secretly aware of the limitations that have caged us in our lives as the years grow. So I fucked her, yes; but I imagined that it was love, that this afternoon between these cheap hotel sheets was in some way a door opening on a new day for the tragic broken thing I’d made of Abigail Walker. But at some point she whispered with some urgency, “Tie me up with the stockings. Tie me to the bed, then turn me over and fuck me.” Wrapped up in the moment, I twisted the nylon stockings that had had me hypnotised from day one and knotted them around her wrists and then to the bed. It happened in moments and I eagerly turned her over and slid back inside her. But then she said, “Hit me.” Her voice was blunt, unadorned. These were no lover’s whispers. She twisted against the stockings and hissed: “Fucking hit me. Do it.” I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Instead I increased my urgency inside her until she was gasping in pleasure. I hoped it might deter her from what she clearly wanted from me, from anyone she shared her bed with. I wanted nothing to do with this kind of sexual psychosis, thought per- haps in that moment that I could change her somehow. Fix her. When we’d finished I untied her and she curled away from me like a wounded creature. Spent, I stared at the ceiling, wondering what the hell I was doing, in a cheap hotel with a beautiful rich woman who

the only broken blonde 39 wasn’t mine. She was silent, turned away. Her eyes were open. I moved behind her, traced the scar from her belly, up between her breasts and paused at her throat. I closed my hand around it and whispered: “Is this what you want? Would you like me to strangle you? While I’m inside you? Would that make it better?” “Tighter,” she said to the window. “As tight as you can for as long as you can.” I released her. “I can’t do that,” I said. “That isn’t me. I can’t hurt you. Not even if it’s a game.” “It’s not a game,” she said. She turned over and she traced the scar from her face to her pubis. “Does this look like a game?” “That looks like a psychopath who doesn’t understand no.” She smiled finally with something approaching affection. She ran her palm over my face and into my hair. “What if I like it that way?” “No one likes being scarred that way.” “I’m one big scar,” she said, with the smile still on her face. “Even before Damien.” “So you like it? You’d prefer being hurt to – ” “To what?” she interrupted. “Being loved? By who? You?” I considered the question for a moment. “Why not?” She smiled. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Not rich enough for you?” “Maybe we should run away and never look back.” She pressed her warm body into mine and whispered, “Isn’t that what rich girls and their handsome chauffeurs do?” I shrugged. “I don’t read those sorts of books.” “We’d need a plan.” “Of course we would…” “We’d need money.” “Naturally…” Abigail climbed on top of me and slid down onto me, looking me in the eye all the way down. “Say that’s what you want.” “That’s what I want,” I said, reaching for the stockings again.

The next few days were a busy time for Gerald Marston. I drove him

40 simon avery into London several times over the week as he met with accountants and solicitors, board members. He didn’t have time for mistresses this week. I spent time parked near his gallery in Kings Road in Chelsea, watching the rich girls and boys come and go from Harrods, loaded down with bags of perfume and clothes and all those pointless things. We went from there to the gallery that had been forced into closure on the South Bank, and I watched the pretty boys and girls and old men in silk scarves go in and out of the theatres. I saw some actors come and go too, their faces slightly familiar to me from magazines that Abigail left lying around in hotel rooms that we fucked in. I overheard talk from Marston about a venture that had gone south for him and his partner; they’d attempted to do a Saatchi and Saatchi and had diverted a whole mess of funds made from their lucrative art business into an advertising agency. After two years the situation had gotten out of control; his business partner had taken his shares and most of the client list; all of that money Marston had invested in the venture had left him exposed. From what I could gather, his stock was down; he was haemorrhaging money left, right and centre. Nevertheless he was still liaising with grant agencies, trustees and local council groups to acquire funding and sponsorship for an exhi­ bition of one of those contemporary artists in the vein of Damien Hirst or Tracey Emin. With the aid of his crack team of accountants and financial analysts, he’d managed to remain sufficiently in the black to pass himself off as a key player in the art world. From the look of the catalogues it looked like shit to me, but what did I know? I had to admit, Marston had brio; despite spending most of his time with his accountants trying to plug the leak in the sinking ship that was his business, his silver tongue had netted him and his gallery in Chelsea one of the highest profile exhibitions in Europe with Martin Rinaldi, the current enfant terrible in the art world. There were other people I was taking him to meet too in that week; an altogether different class of businessman that I ferried him to after company hours. Clearly, Gerald Marston was a man with a plan, and it was of the crooked variety. Parked outside their homes and clubs, I started to feel like I was eight years old again, forced to sit outside in

the only broken blonde 41 my dad’s rusted old Cortina Estate with a can of Coke and a chocolate bar for company while he conducted his own brand of business. It took Marston a while to get used to this state of affairs, but after a few days I sensed a change in him. The broken man floundering against the tide of insolvency was learning to swim. By day I drove him to the gallery to catalogue acquisitions and plan the organisation of the exhibition; and then later to the business park in Burgess Hill where two warehouse facilities maintained the artworks for the exhibition in a secure, climate controlled environment. He was negotiating loans of existing works from other galleries, planning budgets and liaising with trustees and art buyers. By night it was all suitcases that I assumed were stuffed with cash drawn from numbered bank accounts, and brought to anonymous buildings where other chauffeur driven cars were parked. While Marston got his hands dirty, I kept my head down and my mouth shut but I listened hard and took notes. We’d need a plan, I heard Abigail saying. Of course we would, I heard myself reply- ing. I kept thinking. And while I did I thought of Abigail Walker and her many charms. No longer stranded in the uncertain geography of my life, I snatched our moments where I could find them. Within two weeks of this subterfuge, all that mattered to me was her; I was only ever at home in her arms, between her legs, under her covers. She was the only broken blonde in town. On days when Marston didn’t require my services, we drove to cheap hotels in and around London or to my shithole of a flat, and tried each other out for size. I still wouldn’t hit her, hurt her or abuse her, despite her pleading for it every time in the heat of it all. I tied her to the bed, I blindfolded her, and I gave it to her as dirty as I could muster, and slowly something seemed to thaw. I caught myself watching her sleep afterwards, her blonde hair thrown across the pillow, and hear my heart racing in my chest. I’d watch her walk away down anonymous corridors in shitty hotels and feel the sweat grease my palms at the sway of her hips. I’d trace the scar from her face to her belly and below and be in love with it in the same way I’d been in love with all of those other broken things I’d brought home over the years. I hated to drive her back to the house and Damien Marston. I hated

42 simon avery the subterfuge as much as I loved it, hated the dirty secret of it all as much as I loved the notion of sleeping with the rich kid’s girl. She felt like shrapnel in my chest; I’d never get it all out.

Three weeks later and we had it all worked out. I’d told her about Gerald Marston and his business affairs, both diurnal and nocturnal. She knew all about the exhibition of course; I guessed it was the talk of the family, the subject on all of their lips, although I couldn’t imagine them all around the dinner table, discussing their respective days: the businessman father and husband turned criminal, the lush wife and mother, the sadist of a son… But she knew about the exhibition and more besides. I only had to fill in a few of the gaps for her about Marston’s nightly jaunts to the seedier side of town in order for us to smooth out the kinks in the plans she had made for us both. When she laid it all out for me, I could feel the sweat break out across my back, and my skin crawl at the sheer audacity of it, the kind of money we were looking at stealing. We were in my flat the night we talked about the plan. She lay naked, her head on my belly, chain-smoking her way through a pack of French cigarettes, the ashtray on my chest. After she’d stopped talking, there was a long pause until she said, “So, what do you think? Will it work?” I stared hard at her, and I felt my mind swimming with ways it could go wrong; it didn’t occur to me that it could simply go according to plan. Her hair was falling in her face; I shifted it with two fingers so I could see the scar clearly, the pale puckered edges, the places where the skin pulled tight, the way it snaked down her otherwise perfect body. “When?” I asked.

The next day I went to see my old man, and I floated the plan with him. When you intend to pull off something of this magnitude, you should go to the best for advice. And despite never really having pulled off a score that would see him on easy street for the rest of his life, my old man knew every loophole, every grift, every con, and every scam in the book. He could pull a job apart and put it back together with

the only broken blonde 43 the right men in the right place in thirty minutes flat. But sometimes there’s no talking to the old man. He’s a man of few words. I said: “There’s a girl…” He said: “There usually is.” “She’s blonde…” “They always are.” I said: “She has a scar. Her boyfriend cut her open…” He said: “Just your type.” I said: “They’re rich, this family. They deserve what’s coming to them…” He said: “Everyone deserves what’s coming to them.” “I’ve looked at it from all angles. It’ll work.” “Look at it again. If it works, sometimes you don’t know all the facts. Look at it again. And make it simple. Simple always works.” I said: “I’m going to do a bad thing…” He said: “If you do a bad thing, do it good.” He smiled. “And take it all the way.”

The warehouse in Burgess Hill Industrial Estate houses thirty-four units, most of them small square spaces with steel shuttered doorways opening off the building’s long sides, and home to a carpenter’s shop, a car workshop, a cleaning business, a steel fabrication outfit, firms run by families, friends and entrepreneurs. Running down the centre of the building, however, like the nave through a cathedral, are two much larger rooms, once home to a small London household remov- als company, and since 1996 leased out to Millennium Art, Britain’s most successful handlers, packers and shippers of artworks. Theirs is a blue-chip client list: the Queen, the Tates, the Smithsonian, Charles Saatchi, and Gerald Marston… Locked away in this space, packed in foam and wooden crates is a store of the last twenty years of British art, and the contents of Gerald Marston’s Martin Rinaldi exhibition. Artists receive bills from an address in Richmond, not knowing that their work is farmed out to an industrial estate in Haywards Heath. Against the odds there are no security guards on duty, either in the warehouse or in any other part of the building, and crucially the storage

44 simon avery facility has no fire-proof doors, no fire-security systems of any kind. A set of CCTV cameras, operated by Haywards Heath Council, can see the building twenty-four hours a day, but on the following Saturday night at eleven p.m. the camera is dismantled. Several minutes after eleven p.m., a unit containing several tonnes of consumer electronics is burgled by a small gang in a white van, and then the building is set light to. The ignition of several tonnes of highly flammable, plastic-rich electronics is intense and spreads quickly throughout the building. With the absence of security guards or CCTV, it takes a night-worker starting his shift at two a.m. to raise the alarm when he notices flames dancing through the skylights of the warehouse.

We didn’t stay to watch it burn, but we were there to see the thieves arrive in their anonymous white van, dismantle the cameras, and then break into the warehouse unit, bypassing the metal door by boring in through the brick wall. But they weren’t there for the plasma TVs, the Blu-ray players, the mobile phones and assorted other high-end electrical equipment in the unit. Once inside, they bored through to the central unit that was home to Millennium Art, and set about the crude act of cutting the canvases from their frames and placing them into portfolio cases. Some of the bulkier, non-canvas artwork they left behind to burn. But by the time they were done – and they were good; they took no more than thirty minutes by my reckoning – they had stolen not only the entirety of Martin Rinaldi’s exhibition art, but work by Damien Hirst and Patrick Heron, and work by Delacroix, Gainsborough, and a rare Rembrandt landscape. Gerald Marston had done his sums, and Abigail Walker had seen his working out by break- ing into his study in the house in Haywards Heath – we were talking anywhere from £30–50 million in artwork, and most of it was in the back of the van that I was tailing at a safe distance through the mean streets of West Sussex. The rest of it was going up in smoke for vari- ous fire investigators to pore over in the days to come. Canvas burns and then it’s gone. As it was, this looked for all the world like a straight electrical goods theft and a consequently accidental fire. When it was discovered a few hours later that the warehouse contained some of

the only broken blonde 45 Britain’s most valuable pieces of artwork, it would seem incidental to the crime. With luck and a following wind, no one would ever know that all that artwork was still around, no more than ten miles from the conflagration. Gerald Marston had paid good money for the best men he could get to pull off the theft and deliver the artwork to a secret location where it would then be delivered abroad to a black market art collector. Marston would collect his cool £30–50 million and in a year or so quietly retire abroad, with or without his dysfunctional family. I could hardly blame him for the intent, but that wouldn’t stop me from stealing it all from right under his nose. Abigail had done her homework well. She’d discovered the name of the private collector in Paris amongst Marston’s private files. He just wanted the art on his walls, even if he’d never be able to truly show off his original Hirsts, Gainsboroughs and Rembrandts to anyone. The best crimes let some other poor saps do the heavy lifting. We had a plan, and it was loose and dangerous but all that really heavy lifting was done by someone else. I went over it and over it, and the very thought left me shaking and sweaty, but I was sure we could get away with it. And here we were. Tailing the van in the hope that the safe place for the art that no one knew was missing would be accessible in some way. I could hear my heart thundering inside my ears as we followed at a safe distance through the quiet streets. We followed the white Transit van north as it circled Crawley and then drew to a halt in a dark slip road near a Premier Inn, just before midnight. We continued on and pulled into the hotel car park and waited while several million pounds worth of art was transferred by three heavyset men to the back of a grey Peugeot 508. We couldn’t see the driver of the Peugeot, but it didn’t really matter one way or the other. They hadn’t destroyed the canvasses by rolling them into tubes; they had been placed flat into heavy duty portfolio cases that Marston had doubtless insisted on. The men loaded them into the car and then the van departed; immediately afterwards, the Peugeot pulled away too and we slipped out of the car park and in pursuit, my hands stiff against the wheel. At least now all we had to deal with was one man. He led us past Gatwick Airport and

46 simon avery then onto the m23 where he was far easier to tail. He took us all the way onto the a23 and then into the narrow country roads of Coulsdon where the houses all had gates and winding driveways and security lights. The place felt remote, which was obviously the point. Maybe whoever was behind the wheel of the Peugeot was an associate of Marston’s if he lived out here; I assumed he was taking a cut of the projected profits in exchange for the part he played here. We’d had to leave some distance between us as we reached the long, sometimes desolate countryside roads. We were surrounded by empty fields and clusters of trees. “We have to make a decision,” I said. Abigail nodded. There were two Louis Vuitton suitcases wedged into the boot, and behind the driver’s seat, a battered holdall that con- tained much of my worldly possessions. I’d spent five minutes in my flat earlier, looking around at what was there. Other peoples’ furniture, old newspapers and broken things. Just stuff. I travelled light. I always had, by necessity most of the time. Abigail did not. I said, “We’ll have to stop him before he disappears into one of these big houses. We might have to use the gun.” She glanced at the glove box and shook her head. “Let’s not lose our heads just yet. If this guy is one of Marston’s rich flunkeys, he’ll shit himself as soon as he catches sight of you in the balaclava.” I hadn’t asked about the gun; where it had come from, if she’d ever had the recourse to use one. I didn’t want to know. When I glanced across at her, all I saw was that scar; a woman with a wound in place of a life. I saw a stranger suddenly. Two strangers, running together. I felt a cold slab of dread rise in my chest for a moment, at the weight of what we were attempting to do, and then, just as quickly, it was gone and I saw her naked beneath my hands, and all that doubt slipped away. I put my foot down and my heap jerked forward; within a minute or so, the Peugeot’s tail lights came back into view at the well of a steep road, and, as I descended I reached 70mph and closed the gap between us. The inference was clear. Soon I was close enough to see the driver glancing nervously in his rear view mirror I flooded his car with my headlights on full-beam. He lost traction for a second as his attention wavered from the road. I revved my heap; the exhaust had

the only broken blonde 47 long been fucked enough to sound pretty menacing. He pulled away after another nervous glance around at the light flooding his car. I stood on the accelerator and closed the gap. I couldn’t take many more chances here, couldn’t waste any more time; at any point another car might appear on this remote little road and throw a spanner in the works. He pulled away, I tailgated him again. Finally I said to Abigail: “Get me the balaclava. Now.” I threw my heap around his, almost put my foot through the floor in order to overtake him, then, with twenty feet distance between vehicles, I swerved into his path. I heard his brakes squeal. I felt the sweat greasing my steering wheel, and my car jolted back and forth as I wrested control of it. He stopped. I’d counted on it. People with new cars always do. They hate scratches on the paintwork. I tugged the balaclava on and flew from the car. This was all about attitude. Everything is, in the end. All of life. Race at it. Bare your teeth at the motherfucker and it’ll bend to your will. I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting him. Damien Marston, his dull little face staring out of the car at me. It slowed me down for a moment and I considered all the permutations. He was in on this. He was doing the dirty work for his father in exchange for what? A cut? That sounded about right. Maybe he’d figured out that his old man was in dire straits the same way Abigail and I had. Maybe he was blackmailing his father. That sounded closer to the truth. I couldn’t let him realise who I was, but even with a balaclava on, it wouldn’t take a genius to make me and the model of car I’d arrived in. I put those thoughts away and kept right on going according to the plan. And in the end, it felt good. I flung open his door and roared at him until he stumbled out. “On the floor,” I screamed. “Over there! Now!” He walked away to the side of the road with his hands on his head, his eyes drifting to my car and my passenger and then back to me. “Turn the fuck around,” I roared, and I swear I saw him smile. I tugged open the back of the Estate and reached in for the heavy duty portfolio cases. They were heavy and there were eight of them. It took me three trips, from the Peugeot to my own car, and by the end of it the balaclava was soaked with sweat. Abigail’s suitcases in the back of

48 simon avery my car weren’t helping with the space problem. At that point, I had no real idea of what I was dragging from one car to throw into another. A Rembrandt, a Hirst and a Heron, a Delacroix and a Gainsborough; others too. When it was done, I took a Stanley blade from my car and slashed all of the Peugeot’s tyres. Then I went over to Marston, spun him round and, without a word, went through his pockets. I found his mobile phone, dropped it onto the road and stamped on it, then I took his keys and tossed them into the field beyond the hedge. For a while at least, he was on his own. As soon as he was able, he’d probably call his old man, and tell him who’d stolen their financial future from under their noses. I didn’t say anything. I just left him there. In retro- spect I should have shot him. Had I known what was coming later, it would have been a pleasure. I got back in my car, tugged off the bala- clava, glanced at Abigail, and then pulled away, into the darkness of our future together.

We drove away from the city towards Folkestone, to a caravan that belonged to my old man. The plan was to lay low until the morning, and then make our move. A couple of nights ago, Abigail had brought her laptop with her to my place and we’d booked seats on one of those cheap coach trips from Dover to Calais. We’d board at the Folkestone Euro Tunnel terminal along with all the pensioners and drunks looking for a quick trip over the English Channel to load up on cheap booze and cigarettes at the Calais supermarkets. We’d do the unthinkable and roll fifty million pounds’ worth of canvasses up into tubes, place them in the suitcases and stow them in the luggage hold under the coach we took. The Border Police almost never checked the holds of coach parties making the simple trip to Calais. It just wasn’t worth it. And even if they did, who knew to look for a fortune in missing art? From Calais we’d hire a car and travel to Paris to sell the art to the collector Marston had intended to sell to, for less if he had any qualms, and then live the happy ever after we’d heard some lucky people had. But there was Gerald and Damien Marston to think about. I couldn’t be certain how it would all play out. Robbing the robbers meant there’d be no police involved, but I doubted a hard-nosed businessman like

the only broken blonde 49 Gerald Marston – a man who’d masterminded the theft of almost fifty million pounds’ worth of art in order to retire a rich man and not a pauper – would simply roll over when it came out that the chauffeur and the girlfriend of his son had absconded with that prize. And I doubted that Damien would take what had happened to him lying down. Something about that innate madness, that loose wiring in his head wouldn’t accept that self-same chauffeur running off with the only broken blonde in town. His broken blonde. Sometime after two in the morning, I had to stop at Maidstone services. We were only twenty miles from my old man’s caravan near Folkestone, but the adrenaline had left me and I could feel my limbs going limp, the fear taking a sly hold around my throat. I kept glancing across at Abigail, and aside from one shared look where she smiled and squeezed my knee like we were an actual real couple, she kept her attention on the road uncoiling in front of us as we sped into the night. She’d gone cold, determined. I didn’t like it much but I kept my mouth shut. We locked the car and joined all the other sleepwalkers in the dimly lit Costa and sat at a table, listening to the cars slithering by in the rain, back onto the motorway. I closed my hands around the coffee and looked at Abigail, who appeared untouched by tonight’s events. As if this was business as usual. I didn’t say anything. I just wanted to look at her. The scar didn’t diminish her, it only lit her up, gave her life. For the first time since we’d begun whatever this was between us, I felt like she was mine; that the grip the Marston family had over us was diminishing the more miles we put between us and them. I was wrong of course. I said: “What happens to us when this is all over?” She glanced at me cautiously. “What do you mean?” “When we’re done. When we have the money and we’re home and dry.” I was aware I’d used lots of ‘we’ and ‘us’ in those three sentences. She shrugged. “I don’t plan that far in advance.” I left that alone and said, “I haven’t seen much of Europe. I went to France once. And Amsterdam. Got drunk both times.” She kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye, the light from the

50 simon avery services playing on the scar on her face, turning it into a division; the dark side and the light. Something was playing in the back of my mind, and I had the notion to deal the cards on it now, before it might be too late. I released my hold on the coffee and reached across and took Abigail’s hand in one of mine. She looked surprised but she squeezed out a smile, good little trouper that she was. With the other hand I reached into my jacket pocket and took out a jewellery case. It was scuffed, way past its best. But that didn’t matter. I was used to things being way past their best. All the broken things are. It’s what you do with them after that count. I slid it across to Abigail and she eyed it with the suspicion of a child confronted with a plate of vegetables. She almost surprised me when she said: “I don’t want it.” I smiled. “You don’t even know what it is yet.” We held each other’s stares for a moment and then she didn’t sur- prise me at all when her face suddenly softened and she lifted the lid on the box. I knew she was impressed when the smile wavered. “It belonged to my mother,” I said. “She left it behind for me. On my pillow. On the night she left.” This was the truth. She could tell it was the truth because the words seemed to close my throat. “I was just a boy. I only remember her face because of the one photo my old man kept of her. But I don’t remember how she moved, how she smelled. This is all that’s left.” It was a sapphire pendant on a gold chain. It was nothing special. Not particularly valuable either. But it was to me. Abigail took it out of the box and I studied her face. “It’s pretty,” she said. She knew it wasn’t worth a thing. “So are you,” I said, and I knew she was worth a lot. They were both worth a lot to me in that moment. The two of them together. “Put it on?” I asked. “Indulge me,” I said, smiling. She put it on and I looked at the sapphire on her skin. “It’s yours,” I said. “If you want it.” Then she surprised me entirely when I saw her eyes fill with tears. She looked away then, pushing the tears away with the heel of her hand. I took hold of her again but she pushed me away. “Don’t do that,” she said after a moment. She wouldn’t look at me. “Don’t be nice to me.

the only broken blonde 51 I don’t want it.” She unfastened the necklace and placed it back into the little box. “I don’t want nice.” “I want you,” I said. “When this is all over, I want you.” “I’m not a possession,” she snapped, and when she looked at me, her eyes were full of fire again. “The prettier you are the more of a possession you become. Soon you stop being someone and you just become something.” She pushed the jewellery box back to my side of the table. “Like a pretty little stone in a box.” She rose then and told me she was going to the bathroom. Then we’d be on our way. A few hours’ sleep in my old man’s caravan before we left for France. After she’d gone, I took out my phone and made a call.

When I was a kid, we retreated to the caravan near Folkestone more times than I care to remember when whatever scheme my old man had tried to pull had gone south on him. It was a shitty little bucket of rust in the arse-end of nowhere, but it provided adequate shelter for us when his enemies were out to shatter his kneecaps. I remember the rain hammering down on the metal roof, leaking in; the silverfish in the carpet; pissing in a bucket in the middle of the night… You can’t put a price on memories like that. There was a chemical toilet in there now. I didn’t expect Abigail Walker to squat over a bucket when the need arose. It was a secluded spot, away from the caravan parks and the a roads. My old man had placed it for that purpose, deep in a dense cluster of trees in the shadow of a hill. Turn off the engine and get out, and you can’t hear a thing. Then listen harder and you hear the birds in the trees, the wind in the branches, and the soft hum of life happening elsewhere. There was a small snaking track that we had taken away from the narrow country lane, and that led through a canopy of trees and to this ratty little rust bucket me and my old man would sometimes call home. I avoided Abigail’s eyes while I busied myself unloading the art portfolio cases, the gun from the glove box, the cases and my hold- all. But to her credit, she didn’t say anything, even when I unlocked the caravan door and that smell of damp and rot and stale male odour

52 simon avery came to greet us. She just wrinkled her nose and stepped inside. It wasn’t a big caravan, just a living area and a kitchen that doubled as a dining area, a bedroom as big as a shoebox and a bathroom as big as a matchbox. When we retreated here, my father would make up a bed in the living area while I made myself cocoa, and we’d sit shivering over the calor gas fire until our hands thawed out. After my old man had polished off whatever whisky he’d left here, he would stagger to bed and I’d be left to toil over whatever broken thing I’d snatched from our last bolt hole to bring with me. My childhood, ladies and gentlemen. Those old habits remained. Abigail filled the kettle after I’d checked the calor gas bottle, and I fished out a half empty bottle of Single Malt from beneath the sink. Abigail then retreated to the bathroom, and, after checking that something that my old man kept stored beneath the bed was still there, I opened the portfolio cases to see what it was we’d stolen. I’m no art expert, and certainly no authority on modern art either, so much of it left me cold, and if I didn’t know otherwise, most of the canvasses laid out on the Formica dining table would have seemed worthless to me. Only the Gainsborough and Rembrandt pieces struck any kind of chord with my limited palate of knowledge: 17th and 18th century portraits of people in hats, or steeped in shadow; and in one case a boat rolling on a stormy sea that appealed to me, if only because it reminded me of cheap replicas in gilt frames that I’d once stared at in my grandparents’ home. We had brought stout tubes to roll the canvasses up in. It was surely heresy to subject such valuable art to this kind of abuse, but it was the only way they were going to fit in those garish Louis Vuitton cases in order to transport them. I did it quickly and carefully and then stashed the empty portfolio cases under the bed, left the tubes sitting on the table beside the gun. By the time I was done, and Abigail was wrapped up in the same blanket I’d wrapped myself up in as a child, the heavens had opened and rain was hammering on the metal roof. It was just like old times. We sat in silence for a while. I drank a little of the Single Malt, but not much. I wanted a clear head for the uncertain

the only broken blonde 53 hours ahead. I looked at the gun on the table then back at Abigail. She looked out of place in this piss pot of a caravan. Away from London, away from the rarefied air of the Marstons’ lifestyle, she looked like an anomaly. Like a stolen Rembrandt in a caravan in Folkestone. “Are you tired?” she asked me, her hands around the mug of steam- ing cocoa. I shook my head. Although the adrenaline had left me, my thoughts were keeping imminent exhaustion at bay. There was too much in my head, too many permutations, and too many doubts. “We should still try to sleep,” she insisted. I glanced at her. “You go. I’ll join you in a while.” I sensed her stiffen. It was a tiny gesture, almost imperceptible. But I noticed it. “Come to bed,” she said, her voice suddenly different; an unmistak- able husky tone that was followed by a hand reaching out and inside my shirt. “Maybe I can take your mind off things.” She pressed her face into my neck, placed tiny kisses on my skin, raising the small hairs there, raising something else too. I tried to resist, but I hadn’t managed thus far. I nodded to the gun on the table. “Do you want me to bring that, introduce a little gunplay to our love life?” “No,” she said, rising, peeling off her dress. “I just want you to fuck me.”

What was my first clue? When did I know that she was going to betray me? I’d like to say I knew from the start, from the first moment that I set eyes on her perfect body, her broken face, but I didn’t. Perhaps she had counted on that; that in order for the plan to work, I’d have to be hypnotised by her, drawn in by a need to mend her in some way. She couldn’t know my history, but it had worked to her advantage in spades. But I’d had an inkling several times: that cold stare that she’d lapse into when she didn’t realise I was watching (but I was always watching her; how could I not?); in the way the plan seemed to fall into place once she had me on board, piece by piece by piece. It wasn’t really until earlier at Maidstone services that I knew for sure. I’d seen it in her eyes when she held my mother’s necklace; even someone as

54 simon avery cold as Abigail Walker couldn’t help being melted a little by a simple act of being given something precious. She didn’t want to be loved; she wanted violent men in her bed, wanted them to be cruel, wanted to be burned and beaten, and tied and tortured. She couldn’t be fixed. She didn’t want to be fixed. In short, she didn’t want me. And even if it took that long to be sure, my old man had taught me well. If you have any doubts, turn things to your advantage as soon as you can. Never find yourself backed into a corner. Never walk into a pit of vipers unarmed. If you do a bad thing, do it good. So I’d subtly manoeuvred events to benefit me if things went south; I’d suggested Folkestone, the coach and the ferry to Calais. That way, events led to us being on familiar ground. Namely: here. A caravan in the woods in the rain. I knew it like the back of my hand, even in the dark. So when Abigail rose an hour or so later after our lovemaking, I pretended to be asleep. I’d even left the gun on the table for her. I’d decided to make it easy for her, but a small voice in the back of my mind was still hoping that events wouldn’t play out the way I feared and expected them to. I wanted to be surprised but I knew I wouldn’t be. She probably should have known that even a heavy sleeper would be woken up by someone moving around a caravan, even with the rain hammering on the roof, but I let her rise, open the door and make her call to Damien. That was a surprise at that moment. Until then I’d simply imagined that she’d seduced me and used me for her own ends. I’d thought escaping Damien would be uppermost in her mind. I was just the blunt tool she needed to execute the plan. But she sounded cowed by him, even now. Her voice rose briefly, and whatever he said stung her enough to reduce her to tears. He knew all the places to make wounds by now, even when he didn’t have a knife in his hand. Being in contact with him made no sense at that point. She was still weeping when I appeared at the door and said, “Going somewhere?” She swung round and levelled the gun at me. I lifted my old man’s shotgun into view and smiled. “This has been under the bed since I was six,” I said. “My old man comes down here every now and then. It’s

the only broken blonde 55 nice to have some security against unwanted guests.” She kept the gun aimed at me but I could see her heart wasn’t in it. She was soaked to the skin. “Maybe you should have shot me,” I said. “It would have made this easier.” She shook her head. “I can just about walk away from you, but I couldn’t kill you. I realised that when we stopped in Maidstone.” “You realise,” I said, “that, no matter what you have worked out, when Damien gets here, it’s not just me he intends to put in the ground?” Finally she lowered the gun and I saw tears roll down her cheek. She hated to feel that helpless, but what else could she do? “Why don’t we just go, you and me?” she said. “There’s still time. We can still make it work.” I actually considered it for a fleeting moment. “No, it’s too late,” I said finally. “You had your chance, but you prefer being hurt, Abigail. Being killed should suit you right down to the ground.” “He’ll kill us both.” I shrugged and stared into the darkness and rain. “He can try.”

She came inside after that and placed the gun back on the table next to the tubes filled with a fortune in art. I lined up and counted the boxes of shells my old man kept stored in the caravan, and then set about lubricating and cleaning the shotgun. It was a Remington 870 Express pump action. It had a bottom-loading, side ejecting receiver, tubular magazine under the barrel, dual action bars, internal hammer, and a bolt which locks into an extension in the barrel. Matte black bead- blasted with a laminated hardwood stock. It was a beautiful thing. My old man had taught me how to use it when I was a kid. We didn’t get siege situations often, but it never hurt to be prepared. I loaded four shells into the magazine, engaged the safety and then pocketed the rest of the shells. While I cleaned the Remington, Abigail filled in the blanks of the story for me. Damien had only discovered the secret of our affair less than a week ago. He’d overheard us talking on the phone one night and the tone and the words were unmistakable, even to an oaf like

56 simon avery him. To be certain, he’d followed her one day when I took her into the city, and watched as we checked into another anonymous hotel for the afternoon. That wouldn’t do. A shark never stops swimming. He was already involved in arranging his father’s dealings with some shady criminals and his plan to steal the art and sell it to a foreign black mar- ket collector. When he discovered that Abigail and I planned to steal those paintings, he formulated a plan of his own to sweep in and keep the profits of the sale all to himself. It was a sweeter deal than the one he’d expected to get. By letting us waylay him on a country road and steal the paintings, he suddenly became the victim. He had another phone in the car. After we’d left, he called Gerald Marston, told him the bad news and then arranged to be picked up, and set out in pur- suit of us as we headed south. He was no more than an hour behind us. Abigail had called him at Maidstone services and then again when she’d gone to the bathroom in the caravan. He could pinpoint us quite easily in this day and age, due to the dubious miracle of GPS enabled smart phones. He’d told Abigail that he’d kill me and then tell Gerald that we’d both escaped and that the paintings were gone with us. He would then take the art and store it somewhere. Abigail would go on abroad and wait, and, after Damien had made sure his old man was found, having committed suicide in the family pool, Damien would join her and they would sell fifty million pounds’ worth of art no one knew was missing. “He said I’d made a good choice by using you,” Abigail said. “He said you were the right balance of clever and dumb. Stupid enough to be played, clever enough not to look a gift-horse in the mouth when it presented itself.” “I’m insulted and flattered, all at the same time,” I said, without look- ing up. But I had been easy prey. Any man would fall for the charms of Abigail Walker. And I had. I was still falling for her even now. Hair soaked, wrapped in my childhood blanket, sipping at my old man’s Scotch – she still made my heart quicken despite my better judge- ment. Once I was in her bed, all that had remained was for Abigail to float the plan, give me the bait of fifty million, and wait for me to bite. “When did you realise he was going to kill you too?” I asked when

the only broken blonde 57 Abigail had finished. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Damien, like his father, was out for himself. Abigail would surely be excess baggage. Broken excess baggage. “Do you remember Candie?” Abigail asked after a moment. I remembered her. “Her name is Isobel.” The image of her curled in the wardrobe of an anonymous Travelodge, shivering and bleeding, weeping and covered in shit. I remembered holding her up in the shower to get her clean, then sleeping on the floor beside her as her platinum blonde curls dried on the pillow. Her name is Isobel. “He killed her two nights ago,” Abigail said. The words froze me. I finished with the Remington and took the Scotch from her, took a pull from it, felt it burn all the way down. “Tell me,” I said, There wasn’t much to tell. They’d gone on another fuck session to another out of the way hotel, and taken Isobel with them. Abigail was used to Damien treating them rough. She had the scar to prove how well she was used to it. But two nights ago, flying off his face on coke, he’d tied Abigail to a chair and made her watch while he indulged himself with Isobel. It wasn’t about sex; it was about a little man indulging his base instincts with someone he deemed insignificant because of his privileged upbringing. Perhaps he simply didn’t know how to satisfy a woman; perhaps a girl had laughed at his little dick in his formative years. I didn’t know. I didn’t care anymore. Once he was done, he untied Abigail, whose face had been sprayed with arterial blood and God knew what else. It took her a few minutes to realise that Isobel wasn’t moving. It wasn’t enough that’d he’d cut off her fingers and tongue, that he’d pushed her eyes deep into her sockets. It wasn’t enough. He had to end her life too. He hadn’t even begun. It was then that Abigail realised that this plan of Damien’s might not include her once the chips fell where they may. But she’d kept up with the plan, hoping that things weren’t going to play out the way she suspected. But I’d stopped listening. “He’s going to fucking die,” I said. It wasn’t about me anymore. Someone had to stop him and I was looking for- ward to it. •

58 simon avery We waited outside for the headlights to pick their way through the trees and the rain. We didn’t have to wait long. As we watched the lights bouncing over the rough ground, I saw that it was the white Transit van from the theft earlier. That meant that Damien had come with backup. Abigail said: “I didn’t want to betray you. He didn’t leave me with any other option. But you made it hard to follow through. Things changed…” “No they didn’t,” I said. “You just started to feel guilty about being culpable for everything that happened.” I watched the headlights as the car came to a halt on the dirt track in the middle of the trees. “It’s not too late,” I said. “You could still go out there and take your chances with him…” I’d turned off all of the lights in the caravan and closed the curtains. I’d made a call on my mobile phone earlier and then we’d slipped out of the caravan with the stolen paintings and the guns. Damien Marston would be prepared for all eventualities, but he was lazy too; the kids of rich people often are. Abigail had done most of the heavy lifting of this plan. Now he was simply here to take the paintings and clear all the remaining pawns off the board. I’d left the art in the tubes stored beneath the caravan, safe from the rain, and then with the shotgun in one hand and Abigail’s hand in the other, we’d slid across the muddy ground and into the trees. We moved fast and kept low as the rain clattered on the canopy of leaves above us. The car headlights were throwing the shadows of the trees sprawling towards the caravan. I was tracing a broad circle around the van, stopping half way around to try to second-guess him. But there were three of them in all and they were spreading out silently through the trees. I couldn’t tell if they were all armed. I’d have to assume they were. I felt my heart quicken as I raised the Remington, tried to draw a bead on the man closest to us, then lowered it again. I could hear Abigail’s breath coming in short shallow gasps and I drew up finally, our backs against the sodden bark of a tree. “You should stay here,” I said. “If I’m going to do this, I need to be quick.” Abigail nodded. I realised she was still clutching the gun in both

the only broken blonde 59 shaking hands. I closed my hands over hers. “I won’t let him hurt you,” I said. She looked up at me and the sound of rain faded away from the world. “Why do you care?” “I don’t know,” I said and then I was gone, completing the circle so that I was behind them now. The three men had moved in a semi- circle as they closed in on the caravan. Maybe Damien had an idea that things hadn’t gone according to plan, maybe not. For all he knew we could be lying asleep in that narrow bed, waiting for a bullet for each of us. I watched their shadows spreading against the metal walls of the caravan. I glanced across to where I’d left Abigail. There was still the remote chance that she could betray me, but I didn’t think so. I think she’d known all along that when it came down to it, Damien would kill her. Maybe that was what she wanted. Maybe it would be the natural conclusion to her little psychosexual drama. I could feel the sweat gathering in my palms by the time I reached the rear of the white Transit van. With the shotgun held loosely I chanced a look inside the back window. Nothing. There was no one else to be concerned about. Just Damien and the two men. I tried not to think about them. I didn’t want to wonder if they had mothers, wives, children. I tried to control my breathing. It was twenty or thirty metres from here back to the caravan. They were at the door. Damien was tugging at the handle. He yanked it down and the door swung open. The other two men had pistols of some kind. They tensed and peered into the darkness I’d left the caravan in. When some birds rose clamourously from the trees, they all jerked around, aiming the weapons into the darkness. I smiled despite the fact that my mouth was dry and my hands were shaking. Someone else would be smiling too, and as I thought that, my phone vibrated in my trouser pocket. I’d muted the volume after I’d called my old man earlier. It was time. I lifted the Remington and stepped lightly away from the rear of the van. Marston was poking his own sawed-off shotgun into the gloom of the caravan while the two men composed themselves behind him.

60 simon avery They hadn’t seen me yet. I moved slowly but surely through the trees, going from one to the other until I was on the fringe of the track that led to the caravan. The air seemed to thicken around me and the sound of life, of the world seal up inside my ears as if they were enclosed in sea- shells. The two men spotted me at the same time as a crack exploded from the right of the caravan, echoing around the clearing. My old man and a rifle. They’d hardly realised what had happened until one of them went down on his knees, dropping his gun and pressing his hand to the side of his face which was suddenly all but gone. I saw a mass of red and grey ooze between his fingers. Then he went down all the way and I let fly with the Remington. The first slug exploded above the door of the caravan, and Marston flung himself into the security of its darkness. The other man was too stunned to respond quickly enough. As I advanced, I released another shot and this one hit him in the chest. He was flung backwards against the metal of the caravan. There was a brief look of surprise on his face, and then he too went down, leaving a smear of red against the caravan. I stared at him for too long, stunned at the mess the shotgun had made. I could feel my whole body shaking at the realisation that he was in fact dead. I couldn’t go into shock now. I breathed deep and ran towards the caravan, my boots sliding in the mud, the rain falling into my face. All I could hear was my ragged breath and my heart roaring in my ears. I saw an explo- sion of light in the doorway of the caravan and then heard the report echo around the trees. I felt the bullet whoosh past my ear and take out a chunk of tree bark behind me. I flung myself to the ground and rolled into the mud, away from the line of fire from the doorway. But I had no time to regroup. Damien was rushing from the caravan and directly at me. The second shot from my old man went high and wide. As good as he was with a rifle, he was a good distance away and the visibility between the trees was poor. He followed it up with a desper- ate third shot that exploded in the mud between us. I’d lost my footing and Damien had closed the gap in seconds. I saw the boot swinging backwards then forwards and then it was bursting my nose open and snapping my face backwards. I lost my hold on the Remington and sprawled back into the mud. The energy went out of me suddenly. I

the only broken blonde 61 tried to resist it, knowing that if I lay there too long, I’d be dead. I heard another shot ring out and echo around the trees. This time my old man didn’t miss. It wasn’t a fatal wound; I saw the front shoulder of Damien’s jacket burst open and then his warm blood spray across my face. It slowed him down enough for me to rise to my feet. I could taste the blood and snot rolling from my nose and into my mouth and as I regained my footing, I felt the world spinning off its axis. The Remington was buried in the mud to my left. Damien had stumbled forward, lost his grip on his sawed-off shotgun. He fell into me, and his weight and momentum took me down with him. The breath went out of me as we hit the cold wet ground. He scrambled for purchase and I wrapped my arms around him to slow him down. He elbowed me in my face and my nose erupted in a cacophony of pain. I punched him in the side of the ribs, and then did it again; again. I felt his breath go out of him against my face. I lifted my weight and rolled him over. He kneed me in the groin, rolled me back the other way. He produced the switchblade that Abigail had told me about, and with a motion I barely noticed, he’d cut my face wide open. It felt cold, then suddenly very warm as blood rolled into my eyes. I lunged blindly back at him. I could hear us grunting as we rolled around in the mud. I wondered dimly how long it’d take my old man to give up his vantage position and come to my aid. There was no way he could take another shot at Marston now. Then suddenly, I lost my hold on him and he went scrambling for the shotgun. I reached after him but my bones had gone hollow. There was no breath left in my lungs, no energy left to fight with. I thought of Isobel and what he’d done to her. I wondered if anyone cared that she was gone from the world. I thought of Abigail then, as Marston took hold of the shotgun and rose up. I thought of my fingers tracing Abigail’s scar – all the way down – and of her standing on Brighton beach with the breeze in her hair and the sea licking at her toes. I tried to hold the sweetness of the memory to me to ward off the bitter ones that had replaced them. I saw Marston straddling me with the shotgun in his hands. I watched the rain as it fell out of the darkness and into my face. All the sound was leaving the world.

62 simon avery And then Marston’s face dissolved above me in a cloud of blood. His features seemed to liquefy as the bullet erupted through his skull and exited his face. I felt the blood spraying over my face and I closed my eyes. I opened them one more time briefly and Abigail Walker was stand- ing over me with the gun in her hand, and then my old man was there and I wondered if it was my funeral. Then everything went black.

The day I met Abigail Walker, she said: “Sometimes you want to just get lost. Put some distance from the person you ended up being. I think my dreams were always too big. So big that when the little ones happened to come true, I didn’t see them happening…” We made it all the way to Paris and we sold the paintings to the same private collector that Gerald Marston had made the initial deal with. He didn’t care who sold him the paintings, but we took a hit on the price. Twenty-five million. Abigail bartered with him in broken French, but when it was starting to look dicey, I took hold of her arm and waited for her to see sense. Twenty-five million. Christ. We were concerned about what Gerald Marston would do in retali- ation, but the fate his son had lined up for him was strangely prescient: the old man ended up killing himself. But he didn’t drown himself; he took the rather more prosaic road of sleeping pills and a fine forty- year-old Single Malt. My old man took care of the rest. He’d disposed of corpses before. He was good at digging shallow graves and vanishing into the night. After Abigail had killed Damien, he’d arrived to help me into the caravan and to clean me up. He’d done that before. His bank account would be pretty healthy soon. I owed him a good retirement fund. By the time we left, he was chatting up Abigail like he was forty years younger. He didn’t say anything – we weren’t that kind of family – but I could tell he was hoping for the best for both of us. And we tried. After Paris we travelled through Switzerland and down to Lake Como, where we stayed at Villa d’Este, one of the most luxurious hotels in Europe. With matching scarred faces, we walked in the same gardens that English queens and aristocrats had walked

the only broken blonde 63 in, made love in the afternoon with the warm breeze rippling at the curtains, ate lunch on the balcony of a room that looked like a museum, and watched the impossibly perfect light glimmering on the water below us… It should have been romantic alchemy but somehow, despite the surroundings, despite being rich beyond the dreams of avarice, despite the blaze of brilliant faces and the perfect light of the Italian days, we appeared to be immune to it all. Abigail’s dreams were too big, bigger than she’d realised. Sometimes I came back from a trip to the narrow streets of Cernobbio to find her on the balcony, and I’d hear her talking as I pressed the key in the door. When I got inside, there was no one else there. The realisation chilled me. I told her that what had happened was forgotten; that the Marstons were far behind us now. That was another life. She cried often. I missed her being the ice maiden, the dangerous blonde; I missed her wanting me to tie her to the bed, I missed that initial whirlwind. I missed her, even when we were lying together. Then one day, I came back to the hotel to find her on the bathroom floor. She’d opened her wrists and she was already cold when I lifted her to my face. The person she had been, the innocent girl who listened toher mother speaking to herself in the next room, was long gone. All that was left was a broken thing that I couldn’t fix. Not now, not ever. I hadn’t been able to find the words to console her then or now: sometimes the things we want for ourselves and for others is impos- sible to say. Words run out.

64 simon avery a I can’t believe I started today like any other boring day with the same list of menial tasks and drudgery mapped out in front of me. (That of course is a woman’s lot, as we all know.) If I’d known then what I know now, there’d have been a spring in my step. I’d have turned up the radio. I’d have danced. But we don’t know what’s ahead of us, do we? Any of us. That’s the tragedy. That’s the joy, too. On a day like today, anyway. I didn’t wash my hair this morning, which I should have, but it’s bitter out in the shower in the utility room and I prefer to stay wrapped up in my duvet till the last possible moment I have to face the day, when the alarm radio has wittered the Today programme for an hour then stopped. There were many, many days when that silence didn’t rouse me at all, I just slipped away and was gone and wanted to be gone, gone forever. I so wanted that. And so many days I didn’t want to step outside the front door, but Lest made me. Till he was sick of making me. Till he was sick of all the effort coming from him, he said. It was like a big rock he couldn’t get uphill any more. I used to not want to go outside because going outside meant seeing children and that was the one thing I couldn’t bear. It was easier to bear my own unhappiness, my own fond and reliable darkness, the treacle in my head and around me slowing me and weighing me down, the bad old good old friend that stopped me feeling the pain. Sometimes I’d hear them on their way to school. Joking, swearing, playing, shouting. The hope in their souls cutting me like a knife. And I’d weep until my throat was sore. Because I wanted to be there, out there, collecting my child from school or taking her there, and I couldn’t be. I visited her grave every day. Lest didn’t like that.

bless 65 I wanted her photographs out, and he didn’t like that either. I’d ring those psychic phone lines in the paper or on the internet, and he’d go ballistic over the charges. He didn’t understand. And when I tried to explain, he’d walk away. Leave the room. Slam the door. I think the touch of me, the sight of me, hurt him so much, in the end. But I couldn’t go away, like he did. I couldn’t run off somewhere, run away from me, because I was me. I was Kerys’s mother. And always would be. Every night I’d look at her first (and last) school photograph, kinder- garten I mean, when she still had her beautiful hair, and gaze into her eyes and dream about her. Having the little whispers and excursions we had in life. But in the waking hours the house was empty, cold and dead, and I was alone. Till today. I do all the shopping I can at the Southville Deli because I like to sup- port the small local retailers, because before you know it they could be gone and it’s no good complaining then, is it? So I do my bit, but it’s not exactly cheap and more than ever I’ve got to keep a budget in mind these days so I go to the Aldi in North Road for the essentials, loo roll, washing powder, that kind of thing. Your main shop of the month type of thing. It can save you a packet, quite frankly. I suppose I’m a hypocrite because I know the small shops are threatened by the big boys. I even went on that march from the Hen and Chicken pub to the Council House, placard in hand, to protest about the new Sainsbury’s getting planning permission to rebuild the local store at Ashton Gate, increasing it to double its previous size, with consequent air and noise pollution and effect on traffic, not to mention greenhouse gas emis- sions. It was something I felt very strongly about. I pay attention to those kind of issues about society and the environment. That’s why I went. I just hate Sainsbury’s with a vengeance. (I can’t explain why, I just do.) So, sorry, it’s Aldi for me, when it’s not the Sunday market at the Tobacco Factory, which is just the novelty, really. But nice sausages and cheese, if a bit pricey. Aldi is really good, I find. This particular one is nice and clean and friendly but not too friendly (I’d hate that) and fairly empty on a

66 stephen volk Monday morning, which is when the shelves are slightly depleted after the weekend but you do get the all-important reductions. For instance beef burgers, three for the price of one. Or pasta dishes nearing their sell-by date, three for the price of one also. I was checking the date on microwave moussaka for one, squinting at the label for calories with my wire basket half full on the crook of my arm when I heard a voice I didn’t recognise at first. Weirdly. Silly to think that now, looking back. Really weird. “Mummy?” It felt alien and distant, nothing to do with me, then it became ultra- clear and ultra-recognisable as if it suddenly shot into sharp focus in my brain because suddenly I knew it was her. “Mum-mm-my?” It had a little sob and plea buried in it that made my heart jump. Kerys. I turned and saw her. Oh God. Hair long and gold and shining. It couldn’t be anyone else and I couldn’t believe it, and I couldn’t stop it, the tears just welled into my eyes and I thought I was going to faint and I sank, not to my knees, which were jelly by the way, but to a wobbly sort of crouch and put the basket with its courgettes and carrots and red and green chillies on the floor beside me. “Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, sweetheart?” Kerys turned her head and looked at me through her fringe and frowned. Puzzled by me. Baffled and wary and afraid, as well she might be, thrust again into the world of the living, from whence I dared not think. I just thought, I’d be terrified too if I’d died and come back, wouldn’t you? Her lower lip protruded. She said nothing but her eyes bulged with tears, the little mite. My baby. “Here I am,” I said softly. “Here’s Mummy.” I stood and walked to her. I picked her up in my arms. “Don’t be afraid. Mummy’s going to look after you.” I squeezed her tight, feeling the buttons of her coat against my flesh. Flicked the tears from the sides of her eyes with my gloved thumbs. Pressed a kiss to her cheek, which was warm. So much warmer than

bless 67 mine, newly in from the cold. “Mummy’s going to take you home,” I said.

When she was inside the car and buckled up she started screaming. Poor darling. I wondered what on earth had happened to her that was so traumatic for her to react like that on her return to earth? Or was it simply the process of passing from death to life again? After all, the passing from life to death was traumatic enough. Who is to say the transition back again is any easier? Still, she was back now, back with her mother who could look after her and love and care for her. That was the main thing. What was a little bit of shouting when all is said and done? I put the child lock on. It was the sensible move, I thought. I started the ignition and drove off singing ‘There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly’, the old Burl Ives song. Kerys’s absolute favourite. We always used to sing it on long car journeys, if we went to Clevedon or Weston-Super-Mare or Cheddar. Meanwhile I smiled at her in the rear view mirror but it didn’t seem to calm her. She struggled until she was red in the face, and it pained me. I felt awful. But I remembered what the midwife said to me soon after she was born, not to get upset if they cry, just let them cry them- selves to sleep. They will. Main thing, don’t show them that you’re upset too, or they’ll go on doing it, for attention, and that’s the slippery slope. So I remembered that advice as I drove home with my daughter, newly back from the dead, in the back seat of my Fiat Punto.

When we came in she ran away from me straight to the back door and rattled on the handle but it was bolted and the bolt was too heavy and too tight for her little fingers to pull back. Hanging up my coat in the hall, I said, “Now then, what would you like for tea?” but she just ran into the corner next to the arm chair and sat with her arms round her knees, trembling. “Kerys, love, you poor thing. Come and let Mummy give you a hug.” I stretched out my arms. She didn’t move. Shivered like a nervous rabbit in the shadows. I could hardly see her.

68 stephen volk “You’re safe now. You’re home, sweetie.” I poured a tall glass of milk from the fridge, which still had her drawing of me with big, scribbly hair, held on with a Bart Simpson magnet. She didn’t emerge and I didn’t like to force her or be heavy or horrid in any way. So I grilled some sausages (grilling always more healthy than frying) and put them on a plate with tomato ketchup and placed it on the table facing the TV. I switched it on and selected CeeBeebies on the remote. I placed a knife and fork either side of the plate. Took a paper napkin from the drawer, a red one with white spots, folded it in a triangle and tucked it under the knife. Outside a police car went by, not in our street but the next one. It was after criminals because the siren was on, going nee-naw, nee-naw, dropping to another tone, I think they call it the something effect but I forget what. We did it in school but we did a lot of things in school that aren’t that useful in actual life. Except I would like to know that word now I’ve got it in my mind. It’s annoying when that happens.

When she still wouldn’t eat and still wouldn’t come out hours later, I went upstairs and lay on my bed without undressing with my fin- gers knitted together on my tummy over my cardigan and stayed there until it was dark. I switched the radio on for a while, quiet, with it playing Just a Minute with Nicholas Parsons and lay on my side but I didn’t sleep. When I went downstairs again the sausages were still on their plate. “I love you,” I said, approaching the armchair and sitting on it, knees first. “I love you so much and I’ve missed you so much,” I whispered. “You’ll never know how much I’ve missed you, Kerys. My baby girl.” I reached down and stroked her hair, wrapping a beautiful yellow curl of it round my finger, her eyes glimmering in the shadows below, looking up at me. “Who are you?” she said. It hurt, but I smiled. “I’m your Mummy. Don’t you remember me?” She shook her head. Her lips widened and curled and stiffened and she started to sob

bless 69 again quietly, keeping the sound to herself this time, which made it all the more heartbreaking. “Don’t be sad. You have to be happy, darling. Look. Mummy’s happy.” I grinned really wide up into my cheek bones. “Mummy’s happy because she has you home with her again. See?”

She cried that night. All through that night, poor thing, curled up in the corner downstairs. I hated leaving her there. That first night was awful. The worst, by far. I think because I felt so out of my depth. I didn’t know what to do for the best. It was almost that feeling when she was a baby. You think, I can’t cope, I really can’t do this, then one day it clicks and you think, I can. You know what? I can. “Mummy! Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!” I was her mummy. Why didn’t she understand? I lay there in agony, praying. Please understand. Please understand! But maybe she couldn’t help it that she didn’t. It wasn’t her fault and I shouldn’t blame her for it. If I was in agony, she was, too, a million times more than I was, when you think about it. When you think of children who experience bad things like car crashes, or earthquakes, or losing their parents, or seeing their parents die, that’s what causes trauma. Well, how much worse is it when the death you witness is your own? Not the kind of thing you get over in a hurry, that’s for sure. I don’t think so. On the scale of things, death has to be up there at the top. Your own, I mean. I realised, no matter what, I had to be there for her. As I had when she was alive. I had to hold her hand, not just physically but mentally also. I had to be her mother like never before. It was as if God was testing me. Testing my love. He tested me by tak- ing her away, I knew that. But now he was testing me by bringing her back. He was seeing if I was good enough. Strong enough. In my heart. And I had to show him I was.

When I got up in the morning I went down in my dressing gown and found that half a sausage had gone and of course I was delighted but decided not to make a big thing of it.

70 stephen volk I went back upstairs and washed and dressed and came back down, humming to myself as I did the washing up, sorted the dirty clothes into piles and put the first wash on, humming all the time. ‘My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean’, I think it was. Bring back…bring back…bring back my Bonnie to me, to me… When I came back from the utility room, Kerys was sitting at the table, a cold sausage in her hand, gnawing the side of it. “Good morning,” I said, looking out of the kitchen window into the back yard. “What a nice morning it is. You know, I thought it was going to be rainy today, but it isn’t. It’s really sunny.” Kerys didn’t say anything. She was wary as a pet that didn’t know its place yet, unfamiliar with its territory. When she finished one sausage she set to work on the other. She must’ve been hungry. It was nice to see her enjoying her food. I poured a glass of milk and she drank that too. She made a big gasp when she finished it and had a white moustache on her upper lip which made me laugh. I leaned across to wipe it off with my hankie but she didn’t want me to, and slid down her chair a bit, so I didn’t. I said, “Let’s go upstairs and brush your teeth and comb your hair.” She didn’t nod. So I stood up, walked to the door and held out a hand, making a fist then splaying out my fingers. She got off the chair and put her little hand in mine.

After we’d done both those tasks, I looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “There. That’s pretty. You don’t want to cry, do you? It’s a shame to cry with a pretty face like you’ve got.” On the way back down she stopped at the top step and gazed into her bedroom. Catching sight of some familiar toys, I could tell. Elephant and Monkey-Monk. That was good, for bringing back nice memories, I thought. She padded a few steps to the door and pushed it tentatively open. “See? Nothing’s changed. It’s just like it was. Exactly as it was. As you left it. I made sure of that. Other people wanted me to change

bless 71 things, but I wasn’t having it. No way, I said. This is Kerys’s room.” She looked back at me. I smiled. “I knew, see. I knew you wouldn’t leave me. Not forever. And I was right, wasn’t I? Here you are.” I dropped to my knees. “Oh, my baby girl. My chubby-chops. Give us a cuddle.” I thrust out my hands, Al Jolson fashion. She walked back towards me and I wrapped my arms around her. I pressed my lips to her cheek and I enveloped her and the feel of her hit my brain in a heady rush like an amphetamine, I imagine. I felt giddy. High on sheer happiness, you could say. The unbelievable happiness of a dream come true, and all the privilege and pride and amazement that comes with that. I wanted my warmth to become her warmth and I never wanted to let her go. And I really, really don’t think she did, either. Deep down. How could she? “There, that feels nice doesn’t it? Isn’t that the best feeling in the world?” She didn’t say anything, but I didn’t expect her to. The important thing was I saw it in her eyes. It was definitely in her eyes. Sparkling, shimmering there. I don’t know what you’d call it exactly. But I know what I’d call it. I’d call it love.

Kerys was four years and two months old when she passed over with her perfect little hand in mine, and she hadn’t aged a single day. It was remarkable. Three years had gone by in earth-years, human years of torment and agony for me, of the sleeplessness, of the nights walking aimlessly, skinny, wrapped in my dressing gown in the cold, cheeks sunken, pills, the uptake-inhibitor-blockers whatever they were called, not washing, not caring about anything forever, it seemed like…yet for her it was as if time had stood still. She’d been in suspended animation somewhere. I didn’t mind where. I didn’t care where. I didn’t want to think about it. The idea of it was almost like a bubble and if I thought of it too much, it might go pop. I was terrified I might do something and it would all be over, so I didn’t. Still. Three years. And instead of this gaping hole in my stomach and soul it was suddenly like I’d looked away for half a second and

72 stephen volk looked back, and there she was. Oh God, I thought, I’m such a lucky person. I’ve had my bad luck in my life, I know, but I’ve had good luck too, and the good luck, Kerys, my sweetheart, my darling, is you. You lost your lovely hair. You lost your lovely smile, remember? But you never lost me. Never.

“What would you like for lunch today? Fish fingers? You always liked fish fingers. They were your favourite.” She shook her head. “Pizza?” She shook her head. “Toast? Cheese on toast? Egg and soldiers?” She shook her head. “You always were a fussy eater.” I cooked fish fingers in the end. Put a great big farty dollop of ketchup at the side of the plate. Cut them in three pieces each, mouthful-sized, and blew on them hard before holding out the fork. She chewed, swal- lowed, then opened her mouth wide for more. She ate three of them and was beginning the fourth. “Your favourite,” I said, laughing. “Didn’t I say they were?”

That evening we sat bunched up together watching TV. Kerys had her Winnie the Pooh dressing gown on. I had my arm round her. I’d bathed her so she was radiant and tingly and smelled of that mild, milky bath oil. It was a joy seeing her get re-acquainted with Bob again. We called him Bob because when you pushed him under water he bobbed back up again. I think it’d been Lest’s idea, which made me a little bit sad that he wasn’t here to be with his daughter any more. But that was his decision and he had to live by that now. Nobody asked him to walk out and abandon me. If you abandon someone when they’re at their lowest ebb, I think that tells you what kind of a person that is, at the end of the day, and that’s an eye-opener to the kind of person you made your marriage vows to and vowed to spent the rest of your life with. Anyway, my personal feelings to one side, Bob was quite a good name for a plastic duck.

bless 73 I’d wrapped Kerys up in my biggest, fluffiest bath towel – fluffy duck, fluffy duck – then when we got downstairs immediately put the electric fire on to cosy up the room. Points West announced itself with swirling planets and rousing drums, and amongst the headlines at the top of the programme I glimpsed the blurry image of a CCTV camera in a supermarket, of a hooded figure in an anorak and a smaller figure, legs dangling. I switched it off. Kerys was still singing “Fluffy duck, fluffy duck…” to a Monkey- Monk dancing on her knees and her eyes were not on the screen. I didn’t like the idea of her seeing the bad things they always showed on the news. Death, crime and nastiness. I didn’t want her to have nightmares thinking there were bad people out there, that the world was only full of nasty people, because it isn’t. It’s mostly full of the vast majority of good people who do nice things and not the minority who don’t. “Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.” It’s well-known that negative things can affect the mind of young people. Psychologists and sociologists, all sorts of scientists, have done numerous studies over the years, so they know it’s true. Well, I don’t want my daughter growing up influenced by such images. I want to be a responsible mother.

It was quite emotional to see her back there in her own bed, snuggling with the blankets under her chin, in her powder-blue pyjamas with raspberry spots, newly washed and ironed. Monkey-Monk on one side of her, Elephant on the other, and Big, Little and Tiny Ted all watching from the foot of the bed under the shadow of the book shelf, protecting her from whatever bad beasties her dreams might bring. She had a little army of soft toys, Roo and Raggy, Red Cushion, Seb the Zebra… To think, I was seriously considering placing Seb the Zebra on her grave next to all the lovely flowers people brought, toys and dolls and even a pair of twinkly ballet shoes to see her to the next word. As I tucked her in I wondered what gifts she’d been given to accompany her on the journey back, what the angels in their wisdom had given her.

74 stephen volk Or maybe they’d just given her something abstract, like joy. Like hope. “I used to read you this in the hospital…” I said, closing The Gruffalo as I finished reading it, though I hardly needed to, I almost knew it word-for-word. “Hospital?” “Yes. Do you remember?” She shook her head. “Why was I in the hospital? I forget.” “Because the blood you had was bad, darling.” I lifted a curl from her forehead. “It was nasty to the rest of your body… It was going round like a monster in the woods, eating things up… Like The Gruffalo, it was…but we weren’t afraid of it, were we? We were like the mouse. We weren’t afraid of his knobbly knees and turned-out toes, and the poisonous wart at the end of his nose, were we?” “Was I brave?” “You were. You were the bravest mouse in the deep, dark wood.” “Did I get better?” “No, darling, you didn’t.” I touched her cheek. “You tried. Nobody could try harder. You were a fighter, but it was no good.” She pondered. “Was I sick?” “ Ve r y.” “What happened after I was very sick?” “Darling, you died and went to Heaven. But that doesn’t matter now, because you’re back.” “Were you sad when I died?” “Of course I was sad. I’d lost my little girl.” She frowned. “What was her name?” I couldn’t resist tweaking her nose. “Her name’s Kerys, silly.” “That’s a nice name.” “It is a nice name. That’s why I gave it you.” She said nothing. She looked round the room anxiously. I bent over and kissed her cheek. “Night night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite. And if they do, bite the bad, bad bed bugs back!” That was a routine I hadn’t said for a long time, and when I heard it

bless 75 come out, and remembered how Kerys used to chuckle so loudly and join in, my throat tightened. This time, though, she didn’t join in. But she was tired. There were blue crescents like bruises under her eyes. She was exhausted. I switched out the bedside light and sat on the floor as I always did, holding her hand until she went off, perhaps for ten or fifteen minutes but sometimes for half an hour or an hour but I never minded because it was our time together, just us, mother and daughter, not even speaking, just being, me sitting listening to her breathing, the breathing of the life I’d brought into this world, my heart completely full of love, love for life and love for God for giving me this remarkable thing, feeling the little twitching of dream-sleep in her palm…then having to, but not wanting to, let go…

Returning downstairs, the real excitement of what had happened started to sink in. I wondered if I was right to keep such a momentous, amazing thing to myself. Struggling with my own personal feelings, I felt it my duty to share the news with Kerys’s father. We were sepa- rated, but it was his right to know that his daughter had come back to the world of the living. Some things were undeniably bigger than two adults breaking up who couldn’t see eye to eye any more. Much bigger. The first time I rang his mobile it went dead. I tried a few minutes later and the same thing happened. The third time he answered. He must’ve recognised the phone I was ringing from, because he said, without any preamble, “How did you get my number?” “Lest? Are you in a pub?” I could hear the background noise clearly. Don’t You Want Me Bay-bee, Ohhhhh, and a lot of people shouting to be heard over it. “What does it matter to you where I am?” I could hear women laughing too. Wittering in these ugly, loud voices like animals. “I…I was just thinking on your behalf,” I stammered. “If…if it’s not convenient to talk, I can call you back some other time.” “Yeah. Never. How’s never? Never’s a convenient time, Esmée.” Per- haps his nastiness dawned on him because he sighed, and a sigh can be a sign of regret, can’t it? I remembered the look on his face so many

76 stephen volk times. The look he probably had right now that wanted me to not be there. “Fucking hell, whatever you have to say, say it. Get it over with and leave me alone.” “Don’t be angry. It’s a nice thing.” “Really? Since when is anything to do with you a nice thing?” “It is. Honestly.” I could hear the quaver in my own voice. Feel it in my lower lip. “Esmée…” “She’s back. She’s really back. Kerys is back, Lest.” “You know what? Fuck you.” “I know it’s unbelievable. But you’ve got to come round and see her. I’ve just tucked her in and – ” But all there was in my ear was the burr of the dead line. “She’s beautiful. She’s perfect…” The burr didn’t stop. I wanted his voice to come back on, but it didn’t. “Hello? Lest? Hello? Lester?” I thought, of course, that kind of news, it’s gargantuan. He’s prob- ably leaving the pub right now. He’s probably hailing a cab. Getting in the cab right now, giving the driver the address. This address. Coming straight here. Why waste time with conversation? He wanted to see Kerys. See her for himself. See me. See what I was telling him was true. And when he arrived he might be suffering from shock. He might want to calm down a bit before going upstairs. I should make him a cup of tea. I should put on the kettle. I should make a pot. One tea bag of Darjeeling and one of English Breakfast, just the way he liked it. The kettle boiled. The red light came on. Ping. It switched itself off, the steam rising up the net curtain beside the draining board. I filled the tea pot, warming it first as my grandmother in Cardiff used to do, then giving it a stir with a spoon. The heat almost burned my fingers as I did it. In half an hour it was stewed. In half an hour I realised he wasn’t coming. I thought of him sitting there that time in the caff when I burst into tears and I didn’t know why. It was just something insignificant. And he said, really harshly, “What is it now?” And I said that wasn’t fair, to

bless 77 say that when I was upset. How would he like it? He said, “Jesus Christ, just tell me what’s wrong.” I said, “Nothing.” And I was wiping the tears from my eyes with this tatty cheap bit of serviette or kitchen roll. He said, “Tell me before I go. I’ve got to go in five minutes and I don’t want to leave you like this.” I said, “You don’t give a shit about me.” He said, “You shouldn’t get upset like this over nothing. That’s all I’m saying.” I said, “I can’t help it.” He wasn’t coming. Perhaps he was afraid. He was always afraid of things, Lest. I was always the strongest one. Perhaps he didn’t believe me. Well, that was his business. His prerogative. I wouldn’t ring again. One day he’d regret it. I knew that. One day he’d know what he’d missed out on. So, so much. But for now all I could think was, you fool, you bloody fool. How could I have married such an ignorant fool? Sitting there in my kitchen, I wondered if there was somebody out there who’d understand. And the person who obviously sprang to mind was Amos, the vicar who talked to us before the funeral and was nice. If anyone would be sympathetic about Kerys coming back, it would be Amos. That kind of thing happened in the Bible, so it wouldn’t come as that much of a shock to him. Not as much as it would to ordinary people anyway. He’d said to me in his deep Congolese accent, “Do you believe in the Resurrection to Eternal Life through Jesus Christ Our Lord?” “I do,” I’d said. “Well, good. Good. Everybody must,” he’d said, sitting on my sofa with a sherry in his hand, wearing red socks. “Because without that belief, what do you have? You have nothing. Nothing.” He held my hand. Dark, black hands, black as tarmac. “And I can reassure you as an absolute fact that you will meet your daughter again, of that I have no fragment of a doubt. No fragment at all.” It was late now. Nearly midnight, but I decided to ring him anyway. He’d left his number and he’d said at the time of the funeral not to hesitate, if I felt I needed to talk at any time. Any time at all. I’d been to church every Sunday and listened to his sermons, some of which I understood, and I’d shaken his hand as I’d left, and looked into his big

78 stephen volk brown African eyes as he’d asked how I was feeling, but I’d never taken him up on the offer of a phone call. So now I did. The number was in my book. Whether it was his home or office number I didn’t know. It rang about five times and was then picked up by a messaging machine, which played a synthesiser version of the Hallelujah Chorus. I listened to it, then listened to his deep syrupy voice asking me to speak clearly after the tone. I hung up before the beep. Because during the music I realised I didn’t want anyone else to know. Why did anyone need to know? I knew, and God knew, and that was all that mattered. It wasn’t anybody’s business, the two of us, and now I’d thought about it I didn’t want anybody to know what had happened, to be honest. People can say vile things about stuff they know nothing about. Peo- ple are always eager to do that. Whispering behind their hands when they think you’re not looking. Broadcasting it, on the quiet. Spreading lies about you that you don’t even know about. Petty, malicious gossip. You didn’t have to have a miracle happen or someone return from the dead for them to start rumours flying round here and in this instance it was a miracle and it was someone returning from the dead and I didn’t want any Christians having their say either, or some other fundamen- talist Muslim or whatnot saying it was Their God did it, either. That didn’t interest me. What interested me was looking after my daughter. So the best policy from then on was keeping her indoors and out of sight and out of the public gaze. Like they used to say on the football pools: “Tick this box for No Publicity”. Well, I ticked that box for No Publicity. Too right I did.

The next morning Kerys set up a game of Connect-4 on the coffee table in the sitting room with the curtains drawn and the sunlight outside. We played best of thee and she won two, so I said, best of five. When she won five I said I gave up, she was the champ. The undisputed champion of the world. She went quiet. I sorted the tablet-type counters into two piles, red and yellow. She said, “Can I go now?”

bless 79 “No, darling,” I said, placing my first yellow, ker-plunk, in the centre row. “Of course not. This is where you belong. You know that, don’t you?”

That night she cried again. She was like a little fallen angel, fallen into my arms. But she’d get over it. She’d learn to love me, I knew, just like she used to. Once she’d stopped being so muddled up. From my bedroom I sang ‘My Baby Has Gone Down the Plug Hole’. A song my father always sang to me when I was a baby, according to my mum. When he’d come back from the club “tight” (as she put it) after playing snooker with his mates, he’d stand in his vest and underpants singing that song at the top of his voice, rocking me in his arms. When I’d finished there was no sound from Kerys’s bedroom next door. I crept in and saw that she’d gone peacefully to sleep. I bent over and put my ear to her lips and I could hear her breathing. I could feel her warm breath warming my ear and it was lovely. It was glorious. Glory, glory, glorious, my baby. My little girl. She opened her eyes, sniffing awake. “I want my mummy.” “But I am your mummy. Look.” “I had another mummy… Didn’t I?” She looked up at me. “Her name was Julie.” “No, darling.” I poked the blankets in around her. “You’re just con- fused because you went to Heaven and now you’re back.” “Where’s Julie?” “Julie isn’t here.” She became more upset. “I want Julie.” “Julie isn’t anywhere, sweetheart. You imagined her.” “Was she an angel?” “That’s right. She’s not here but she looked after you once when you were somewhere else.” “In Heaven?” She sniffed. “ Ye s .” “What was Heaven like?” “I expect it was nice. I didn’t go there, so I don’t know, silly. You tell

80 stephen volk me what it was like.” “I don’t remember.” “I expect it was wonderful. I expect the people loved you there.” “I think I remember a house. My house.” “Well…” “My house. A house with a red door and a cat.” “Heaven has lots of cats. But in the end the cats wave goodbye to the little children and the little children come home. And the angels say goodbye to them too. With a kiss. And sometimes you don’t remember that goodbye kiss because you’re asleep.” She said, “I think I don’t remember that.” “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, does it?” My daughter shook her head. I lay next to her with her hand in mine. I lay there beside her and we slept.

The next day we played hide and seek. She always used to love that. I counted to twenty but I jumped over some of the numbers, going straight from twelve to fourteen, from fifteen to eighteen, because I knew she’d already found a hiding place under the table, and she always loved me eking out every ounce of the suspense before com- ing to find her. And she always knew that she’d get a scare and a great big tickle when I did catch her, so there was the anticipation of that in addition. “Again!” she laughed. “Again!” After about ten goes I was exhausted but she was still raring to go. It had lost none of its novelty, and she none of her energy. Until I found her sitting on the floor of the utility room staring at the cat flap in the back door. Her laughter trailed into silence. “Was there a cat in this house?” “Yes there was.” “Where is he?” I tried to get my puff back. “He went away, sweetheart. Do you want some orange juice and a fruity bar?” “Where did he go?” “He went the same place you did. He went to Heaven.”

bless 81 She stared at the cat flap again, then up at me. “Was he the cat I met in Heaven, then?” “Yes he was.” “What was his name?” “His name was Oliver.” “Was it?” Her little face looked bewildered. “…I forget.” “That’s because you’re back home now, precious.” I crouched. “And God takes those memories away, little by little. To give to other boys and girls. Because you don’t need them any more.” I heard a sudden loud knocking at the front door. Not a normal knocking, but the knock of someone who knocks doors all day. It’s their profession. I could just see into the hall and I could just see two dark shapes through the opaque glass. Uniforms. I could hear the squawking radio of one of them. I put a finger to my lips and went “Shh” to Kerys, and Kerys immedi- ately got the message. Let’s pretend we’re not here. It was like a game. It was like hide and seek. She was excited by it. For a second I thought she was going to laugh out loud but she didn’t. I tugged her slightly towards the back door, holding her cheek against my hip. The police officers knocked a second time. I listened hard in case they spoke to each other, but they didn’t. I stayed where I was without moving until I heard the police radio fade away and the knocking moved to next door. I heard the Asian woman’s voice whose name I didn’t know talking to them. “That was a good game,” I said. “That was a good game, Mummy,” Kerys said. Mummy. I had butterflies in my tummy because it was the first time since she came back she’d used that word. “That was a good game, Mummy,” I said too.

I didn’t like lying at the best of times, and not answering the door to the police felt like lying. It preyed on my mind all day. Let me declare

82 stephen volk I’ve always been completely law-abiding and respectful of the law my entire life. But I couldn’t risk what the authorities of any kind might do. The police are forces of might and punishment, and they preserve the status quo. And what I had wasn’t the status quo, was it? It could get me into trouble, I knew, but that wasn’t uppermost in my mind. What was uppermost in my mind was I had to think about my daughter, not myself. “Did I play with this?” I looked up and saw that Kerys had taken a European doll with coffee-coloured skin from her toy box. It had long black hair and long legs and a red dress. “Was this my favourite dolly?” I nodded. “I like her,” she said. “I know you do, darling.”

Kerys was upstairs in the bath when you knocked the second time like some kind of knell. Knocked and rang the doorbell, this time. It was seven-thirty. I know because EastEnders has just started with its swirly aerial view of the River Thames. I wondered if you could hear the theme music, so turned it down quickly on the remote. Probably closing the barn door after the proverbial horse had bolted, I thought, but I couldn’t be certain. Peeking into the hall I saw the two shapes had returned. Black shapes, seeming to be chatting on my front doorstep through the glass. But I couldn’t hear the words. I slipped into the sitting room, edged along the wall behind the sofa and parted the drapes no more than an inch to peep out. I saw you in your black body armour and starched white shirt, big radio on your lapel. I caught the other constable turning in my direction and he must’ve seen the curtain twitch, or me, or both, because he said something and you rapped the knocker harder and I knew this time I had to answer the door. You weren’t about to go away, and what’s more ignoring you would look suspicious. After quickly plucking at my hair in the hall mirror I opened the

bless 83 front door. “Mrs Bentley?” “Yes. I’m Esmée Bentley.” My first thought on seeing you was, here’s a good-looking chap with a cleft chin, slightly swarthy looking, I wouldn’t mind betting he had some foreign blood in there, possibly Greek or Italian, but not Middle Eastern or anything. The one standing beside you, so fresh-faced he could have come straight from sixth form, still had his helmet on, making him look surprisingly military. But you did the talking. “Mrs Bentley, we’d like to ask you a few questions, if we may. It’s concerning the disappearance of a little girl in the area.” “Oh?” I checked the buttons of my cardigan. “You’ve probably heard.” “No, I haven’t heard.” It was surprisingly chilly, but then I’d been sitting in front of the fire. “Oh… It’s been common knowledge round here. It’s been on The News.” “I haven’t heard. I don’t watch The News.” I think it was the other one who said, “None of the neighbours told you?” “I don’t talk to the neighbours. I haven’t been out very much, as a matter of fact.” I realised I was smoothing my wet hands in my woollen top. “Bath time,” I explained. “There’s been a lot of police activity,” you said. “I’m surprised you haven’t noticed. The little girl’s name is Sophie Markham. She’s four years old. Long blonde hair. This is her photograph.” You held it out to me. Not a photograph as such but a print-out like a wanted poster with a little girl in the middle of it. I don’t know why, but you were trying to fool me, giving her that strange name. You were being cunning. I had to think on my feet if I wasn’t going to fall into your trap, that was clear. I held it carefully, not wanting to get it damp with my thumb prints, and though my heart was pounding, it didn’t even tremble. “Have you seen her at all, in the last few days? Or at any time? Anything might be useful to our enquiries.” I looked at it, then shook my head.

84 stephen volk “Like I say, I haven’t been out and about, last few days. Sorry.” I held it out but you didn’t take it back. I wanted you to take it back. “She was last seen in Aldi’s in North Road,” said the younger one. “Do you shop in Aldi’s?” “Yes.” I thought I’d be honest, because I knew he was trying to catch me out, and you can’t catch someone out if they tell the truth. I handed him the poster instead and he took it. “We’re in the process of enhancing the CCTV footage,” you said, giving the impression of being senior in some way. “At the moment it’s Mr or Mrs Blobby.” “It’s quite upsetting,” I said. “It is.” “That’s why I don’t watch The News, you see.” “Her mother’s extremely anxious, as you can imagine.” “Well it makes you anxious. The News,” I said. “Can I have another look, please?” Daring, you could say. Bold. The young policeman hesi- tated then gave the print-out back to me, but I didn’t gaze at it for very long, this Sophie Markham as you called her who I knew was Kerys Bentley. Just long enough. “No. Never. I’m sorry. It’s awful. I hope she turns up safe and sound.” I could tell the two of you found that last expression I’d used inad- equate. You were staring at me. Perhaps not staring exactly. But you shifted from foot to foot and looked at each other. I wondered what you were conveying. What you were up to, in your minds, generally, in your deviousness. “Well, if you have any information that might be of use, please con- tact us at this number. Would you like to keep this flyer by the way? Put it in your front window perhaps? It has the Crimestoppers number on it.” “No. I don’t think so.” I thrust the little poster back towards you. You took it and put it in your briefcase, inside which I glimpsed a whole batch of others, identical. You were looking over my shoulder. “Could we talk to your husband please? See if he…” “My husband doesn’t live here any more. He moved back to Fish-

bless 85 ponds a long time ago.” I tugged at my collar where I felt my skin going a bit red. “It’s just the two of us now. Me and my daughter.” My eyes must have moved slightly because your eyes tilted upwards. Clearly you could hear the splashing noises and Kerys heartily singing “Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud” at the top of her little voice. I laughed, and you laughed too. “She’s in the bath,” I said. “Happy soul.” “Can’t shut her up.” “Tell me about it,” said the young one. “Soppy sod.” You muttered, putting on your helmet. “What?” complained the other one. “Nothing wrong with a dad being besotted by his child,” I said. It was obvious your friend had one of his own at home. I could see it in his eyes, and he wanted to be back there and cuddling her, not on a cold doorstep talking to me. “I think it’s lovely.” “Well,” you said, adjusting your chin strap. “Sorry about your hus- band.” “I’m not.” The corner of your mouth twitched up in sympathy. A sparkle in your eye. Little crinkle of crow’s feet. “Anything… Let us know.” I nodded as you moved down the path, out of the spill of light from the hall. You were almost at the gate when I said: “God help what that poor mother is going through. I’m sure she’s getting a lot of prayers tonight.” “I’m sure she is. For all the good prayers do.” You were in shadow now. “I doubt she’ll sleep, I know that. Good night, Mrs Bentley.” “Good night.” From upstairs you could hear Kerys calling for her mummy. “Good night,” I said again, seeing your smile out there fade into the dark with a faint sparkle of buttons. Your swarthy smile was nice. For a moment or two it made me feel safe and I wished I’d felt safe in my life before that day, that evening during EastEnders, a long time before, but I hadn’t, and it’s no good crying over spilt milk.

86 stephen volk I didn’t close the door too quickly. I didn’t want to do anything to attract undue attention. I heard the click of the latch of the gate before I pressed the Chubb lock shut and flipped the snib. Then bent down to bolt the door at the bottom. “Mu-u-ummm?” “Coming.” I thought (quite clearly, as it happens), you obviously have access to council records, the electoral register for voting purposes and so on, why did you not know my husband had moved out? I’d put it on my census form. Maybe you hadn’t looked there yet in your inquiries. People imagined the police were super-efficient, thanks to Morse and so on (I blame TV for a lot of erroneous presumptions), but very often they weren’t. You only had to read the papers occasionally to know that. Who was that murderer up North, and they’d gone to his house and talked to him and hadn’t realised he’d killed all those women, and ruled him out of the investigation? Like them, you’d simply got your facts wrong…made a mistake…and that was good. For now. Of course it was. But you’d double check. Eventually. That’s what policemen do. That’s their job. Checking. And you’d realise sooner or later. Realise that, according to the most up-to-date information on your database or whatever, Mrs Esmée Bentley lived alone. Sooner or later, sooner rather than later, definitely, you were going to piece it all together. I knew that now. And, strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, I thought of those Roman soldiers who ganged up and stormed into the last supper and arrested Jesus. How they never gave a damn about his powers or the miracles that had happened. How they never believed that a man had been brought back from the dead by Jesus. Or that Jesus Himself came back on the third day after being crucified. They were disbeliev- ers. They were blasphemers. They were murderers. Well, this was the same. This was similar. You weren’t going to believe me. I knew that. You weren’t even

bless 87 going to listen to me. I knew that, too. I wouldn’t be able to get a word in sideways when you next came through that door. When you next knocked on that door for me to answer it. Mud… Mud… Glorious Mud… I switched off the hall light with a crushing, numbing certainty that when you came back you would take Kerys away from me. You wouldn’t let me speak to her, even touch her, ever again. And that thought was too much to bear. That thought, I knew, would destroy me, if I let it. But like a revelation, like an epiphany, I had an idea, an idea so clear it shone down on me like a light breaking through the clouds. But it wasn’t so much an idea, it was more of a message. Because an idea is just an idea, but a message is a message and you have to obey it, you have no choice. Mud… Mud… And the message had a perfection and the reason it had perfection was it must be coming from God, and it was an escape and it was an answer, all wrapped together in one big, big thing inside me. Glorious… And I set my foot on the bottom step and set my sights on the landing high above, knowing with total conviction and certainty what I had to do. What I must do. However hard it might be. Because this was God willing me to do it as he willed me to do all things and all the good things in this world of evil. It was the logical thing. It was the right thing. It was the good thing to do. I just had to have the strength in my heart to do it… You see that, don’t you? Now? Now that I’ve explained everything? What was being asked of me? What was so, so clear? That God in His Heaven was opening His arms once more in his vast embrace. And I had to send her. Send her back to Heaven. Not for long. Not for ever. Sleep, my baby, sleep, my darling, sleep. Just for a little while…

88 stephen volk a “I’m looking for a pair of glasses,” I said. The barman of The Ostler’s Arms raised an eyebrow like it was the only part of his face he’d figured out how to move. He was jowly, with one of those tufty beards shaven to a finish at the bottom of one of his chins. For some reason he reminded me of a jelly bean, but he had a voice like bored gravel. “Tried an optician?” The man glanced at the clock on the wall behind him, talking loudly to compete with the music. It was half past ten. “Not that they’ll be open this time of night. Any time of night I reckon. Unless it was Thursday. Which it isn’t.” “No, I don’t want to buy a pair,” I explained. “It’s a particular set that I’m looking for. And just the frames. The lenses might well be differ- ent, but that’s immaterial.” “Different? Different to what?” He was half humouring me, half telling me to piss off. I could sense him giving me the once over, summing me up and dismissing me in a heartbeat. But that was okay, I had done the same to him even before he had opened his fat, useless mouth. “Different to the original prescription,” I said patiently. “Unless the current owner has the same ocular deficiencies as Simpson had. Which I doubt.” The barman gave the appearance of thinking about this, then grunted. “Are you sure you’re in the right place?” he said at last. “I’m not a betting man, but I’ll make a wager that you’re not.” He had a point. I’d put them all on tonight before I’d driven here, every item. I suppose I had done it in anticipation of at last tracking

the simpson frames 89 down the frames. Perhaps it had been ill-advised. I’d worn the clothes so often in private that I’d lost any objective appreciation of how I might appear in public. Now, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar, and I saw what others would see. It wasn’t so much the clothes in themselves. Together, they could have been a haphazard selection from any charity shop. It was the sizes and ages – all different – so that I realised, to this pig-jowled moron at least, I must look like some kind of idiot scarecrow. It almost made me laugh. There was the black leather jacket, which was two sizes too small, and the white button-up shirt, two sizes too big. The black bowler was so tiny that it sat perched on my head like a child’s toy from a dress-up box. Not to mention the brown flannel trousers. They were short enough that my ankles were showing. The barman couldn’t even see the white tennis shoes, nor the stains on them, so old now that they might have been coffee. “That would depend,” I said. “Is Colin Walker here?” “You know Colin?” “He wasn’t at home. The neighbours said that he sometimes drinks here.” It would have been too much to ask for the barman to grin welcomingly and laugh it off and bellow Well why didn’t you say so?, so he shrugged a half inch instead and said, “He’s out back. With his m a t e s .”

Apart from the name, there was very little that was traditional about The Ostler’s Arms. The exception was the coterie of squabbling drunks in the booth in the corner. This was a modern brewery pub, a joyless barn filled with sports screens and fruit machines, serving inedible burgers with fat-drenched soulless chips and garnishes of failed lettuce. The local students and Sunday league football teams came here to make an irritating amount of noise while they got drunk on fizzy cider and looked for someone to shag. I threaded my way through the main bar, past the crowds of gawping halfwits standing watching the Red Team play the Blue Team on the Big TVs. My clothes attracted the odd glance from the apprentice drug

90 antony mann dealers and wannabe hard boys who milled about the pool tables, but the best they could come up with was a pathetic “Hey, nice trousers!” Admittedly, it was short notice. I ignored them and walked through the door in back. In here it seemed more like a pub. It was a small room with a low ceiling. There was no bar, but it had a cosy feel. The lighting was softer, and you could hardly hear the cacophony in the main room. A bunch of men had spread themselves across three or four tables, watching a few others play darts, laughing, making the odd comment. It was that compulsory British banter thing, the all-pervasive drunken rep- artee which, in the absence of intellect or conversation, glued a group together. Most of them were in their thirties and forties. They had the look of locals, not local youth. I knew Colin Walker straight away. He was standing at the chalk board, writing down numbers. He wasn’t the only one wearing glasses, but he was the only one wearing square plastic tortoiseshell frames. I got a thrill then. It had taken me an age to track them down, as it always did. It was the first time I had seen them, apart from in photographs and news footage. Walker was a small man in his late twenties. He wore jeans and a T-shirt. The frames didn’t suit him at all. I knew they would look far better on me. The joking and the talking stopped. Ten or twelve blokes were staring at me now, wondering who I was and what I was doing in what they considered their room. “Hello,” I said. “I’m looking for Colin Walker.” “That’s him with the darts,” said a big guy with no hair. He angled his fat neck towards Walker. “Friend of yours, Colin?” A couple of them laughed – at me, I could tell – but also, I sensed, at Walker. Was that his role in the group? Was he the one they ridiculed? The easiest target, slightly different to the others, the square peg who spent his miserable leisure hours trying unsuccessfully to fit in? Walker was frowning. He didn’t know me, and now he didn’t want to be seen to know me. Not in front of his good buddies. “Yeah?” he said uncertainly. “I’m Colin Walker.” They were all looking me over now, the same way the barman had,

the simpson frames 91 all half pissed and indifferent, but at the same time annoyed at the interruption of their precious game. Putting me inside a little box inside their tiny brains. It was the same box that all of them had chosen for me. I was the stranger, the guy in the funny clothes. I was less than them, and thus an appropriate object of scorn. I was beginning to regret my decision to wear the outfit. My excitement had gotten the better of me. It was making me a target, as I should have known it would. But it was too late now. “We spoke on the phone,” I said, then gave a name. “Peter Mac- Intyre?” “Oh,” said Walker uncomfortably. “Oh yeah.” “I tried your house. Your neighbours said you might be here.” “You want my glasses.” “Just the frames,” I corrected him. “Oh yeah. All right. Sure.” Now, as he slowly took his glasses off, they were all looking at him, not me. “Hang on a sec!” said Fat Neck. “What’s going on here?” Walker laughed feebly. “This guy…” “Peter,” I said. “…this guy wanted to buy my glasses frames, so like, why not yeah?” “He wanted to buy your glasses?” said Fat Neck incredulously. “Well yeah, so what?” said Walker. “He just rang me up and…” “He just rang you up?” Fat Neck turned to me, almost accusingly. I could see that he was starting to revel in his role as head taunter and inciter of morons. “But that’s not right! Colin won’t be able to see! He’s blind as a bat without his specs, aren’t you Colin?” “Actually, it’s not too bad,” said Walker. “I can see pretty – ” “He’s got to play darts!” Fat Neck cried. “How can he play darts if he can’t see?” I didn’t much like where this was heading. Coming here had been poor judgment. I should have waited. Taken a room in a local hotel and gone round to Walker’s place in the morning. But I had been excited to find them, to have the frames within my grasp. “If it’s inconvenient now I can come back later,” I said, addressing

92 antony mann Walker directly. “I don’t mind dropping round your place. Tomorrow okay?” Walker nodded. He seemed to like that idea as much as I did. He was about to answer when another of them broke in, a lanky fellow with straggly dark hair and a long face. “How much is he paying for them, Col?” “Well…” “How much?” Fat Neck repeated. Walker hesitated. He clearly didn’t want them to know. At last he said quietly, “Two hundred quid.” “Two hundred? Two fucking hundred?” said Fat Neck. “They’re worth twice that if you ask me! Pair of cheap plastic knock-offs like that from a party shop!” A few of them laughed. “Where’d you get them from anyway, Col?” said Long Face. “Don’t know to be honest. Far as I remember I’ve always had them.” That wasn’t quite true. I knew that it had been from his father, who had bought a job lot of junk from an ‘antiques’ dealer in London, thirty years before. Hoping to turn a quid at local boot fairs, no doubt. But the glasses had never sold, and why would they? Cheap plastic, you could get them anywhere. So the frames had stayed in the family, for- gotten, gathering dust in a drawer somewhere until one day Walker Jnr had come upon them and taken a shine to them. “So what do you want with them?” Fat Neck asked me, slowly. I could see behind his eyes, the wheels in his usually dormant brain beginning to turn. “I’m a collector,” I said, making it up as I went along – though to be fair, in a sense it was true. “A dealer.” “What do you collect?” said another of them. “Crap?” “He needs them to finish off his costume!” chimed in yet another. “He’s going to a fancy dress party as a dickhead!” Fat Neck held up a hand to quiet their laughter. “Not now, boys. This is interesting. He looks like a…smart chap. Why would he pay two hundred quid for them if they weren’t worth something?” “All right,” I said. “You got me. They’re Harry Palmer frames.”

the simpson frames 93 “And what the fuck are they when they’re not stuck on Colin’s ugly mug?” “From The Ipcress File.” “Whatever the fuck that is,” said Fat Neck. “I’ve seen that!” Long Face chimed in. “It’s some old spy flick with Michael Caine. Good film actually, Eddie. He wears those kind of glasses in it.” “All right,” Eddie – Fat Neck – smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Original Michael Caine specs from a movie, is it? Could be worth a bit more than two hundred quid, then. Depending on how badly someone wanted them.” I shrugged, trying to hold it all in. They weren’t actually going to fuck me over on this, were they? “Maybe,” I said, keeping my voice even. “Maybe two fifty. Three hundred tops. But I am a dealer. If I don’t make a margin, it isn’t worth i t .” “Well that depends on what you can sell them on for, doesn’t it?” said Eddie. “You see I think they’re worth a bit more than that. Let’s say, double the two hundred to make it what you ought to have offered Col in the first place, considering as youare a dealer. Plus another two hundred to bring it up to how badly I think you want them, considering as you drove all the way here from wherever the fuck without a second thought. And then we can stick on another four hundred for you interrupting our game of darts and looking like a right tosser in the process. So what’s that, an even thousand?” It was hard to do what I did next, but I knew, if I accepted the offer – and I wanted to badly, just to get hold of them – if I accepted the offer, then they would really have me, and I might end up paying three times that. Or not get the frames at all. I could see Eddie relieving Walker of them and grinding them under his boot then and there, just to spite me. He was that sort of prick. “Sorry we couldn’t do business,” I said, then spun around and walked. Those few steps seemed to last forever. I had almost made it to the door when the cry came. “Call it five hundred!” I turned to see Eddie poking a finger towards

94 antony mann Walker. “And you’re giving me two hundred of that for getting you a better price.” “Four fifty,” I said. “What the hell,” Eddie shrugged. “I’m still getting my two tons.” “But that only leaves me with two fifty and they’re my specs!” Walker complained. Eddie waved him away. “Be happy with it, pair of shit plastic specs from some stupid film, you’re lucky you’re getting anything.” “Two fifty quid?” cried Long Face. “Must be Col’s shout!” As I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet, I saw Colin Walker wince. He was the man who had thought he was getting a lot for nothing, then was peeved when he ended up with less. I didn’t care. I had the frames.

It was Long Face who found me in the toilets. I had gone there at once, taken the lenses out of the glasses, and tried on the frames. They were a little small for me. Nonetheless, they fitted perfectly. As did the jacket, the shirt, the trousers and the shoes. I was admiring myself unashamedly in the mirror when he walked in. When he saw me he stopped, and for a moment just stared. Then he smiled a lopsided smile. “So what’s it really all about then?” he said. “That Michael Caine bullshit? I don’t buy it. If you were a dealer, you wouldn’t poke the lenses out, would you? And you wouldn’t be wearing all that other shit, whatever it is… Why are you wearing that crap, anyway?” “Why?” I echoed. Why was I wearing Iain Murphy’s trousers? Or for that matter Graeme Lyon’s tennis shoes, still stained with blood of his second vic- tim, Ross Pritchard? Ralph Arthur Mitchell’s leather jacket? The shirt that Stuart Chapman was wearing when the police found the Farrell twins in the boot of his car? And the Simpson frames. Simpson, you may recall, was the man who strangled – among others – Jessie Porter. Her body wasn’t discov- ered until after Simpson’s death, when his house and all the contents had been sold at auction and the new owners had begun to excavate a

the simpson frames 95 section of the garden for a shed base. Simpson strangled her with her own hair. I didn’t have a problem with Long Face. But Fat Neck Eddie, now he had really irritated me. Not that he would be the first. No, my connection with Eddie was too strong, too fresh. To begin with it had to be random. Out of the phone book, or on the roll of a die. I could come back to Eddie later. He wasn’t going anywhere. He would be number three, or six, or eight. It didn’t matter which. “Why?” I repeated, meeting Long Face’s gaze in the mirror. “I think because…well, I couldn’t really have said this until tonight…but now that I’ve found the frames…I feel somehow complete.”

96 antony mann a Nick hated the house from the moment he saw it in ’63 when Uncle Vinnie stopped his big Chevy Caprice out front and said, “Rent it to you cheap.” Uncle Vinnie had a horror of getting “coloreds” or Puerto Ricans or foreigners as tenants. But though his uncle was willing to cut the rent to keep it in the family, Nick saw right off that nobody was going to stand in line for this dump, not even at Uncle Vinnie’s idea of cheap rent. 487 West Spring Street was a dark, former mill worker’s duplex with a regular first floor and half pint rooms above where Nick knocked his head on the sloping ceilings and squat dormers. The porch sagged – rotten wood somewhere, Nick figured, a supposition confirmed inside by the peeling linoleum, loose wallpaper and eau d’mildew: just a peach of a place. To Nick’s mind, the smart thing would be to find someone gullible enough to buy the house outright. “Course it needs work,” said Uncle Vinnie as he grabbed the door frame to heave himself out of the car. Nick could see it still, the way that big Chevy had sagged, disgorging Uncle Vinnie like some land- going whale. They stood out front a minute on the cracked concrete, while Uncle Vinnie got his breathing calmed and his weight settled just the right way over his weak knees. A block and a half east, the old silk factory sat right on the river with its foundation in the water. The big brick structure had one last tenant, a struggling button manufacturer which took up part of the ground floor; the rest was given over to pigeons, rats, and transients. The remains of industry’s glory days were the shell of the old works and a nasty parade of former mill houses lining both sides of the

cheap rent 97 street. Distinguished only by their color and degree of dilapidation, the cramped row of shabby duplexes was the very image of a dead end life, and they gave Nick a bad feeling about the whole deal. Still, he kept his mouth shut, lest Uncle Vinnie tell him for the umpteenth time that he was “a mighty lucky son of a gun,” because Nick had spent two years courtesy of the US Army in Offenbach, Germany, while Junior, Uncle Vinnie’s eldest, caught a mortar at Pleiku and came home with a shattered knee and a major heroin habit. Besides, Nick told himself, the place, any place, would be okay for the moment. He needed an apartment, and as his mother had undoubtedly told Uncle Vinnie, his job loading packages part time at the delivery service just couldn’t stretch to deposit and first and last month’s rent. So, okay to $145 a month plus repairs, because while the old bastard would do a favor, he always expected to get back something on the side. That was Uncle Vinnie. Funny, how Nick could see him still, getting out of the car with a grunt and a whumpf and the Chevy – real steel then and powerfully heavy – listing to one side. Uncle Vinnie’d been dead twenty years or more, which was a modest satisfaction to set against the fact that Nick, himself, was still parked in the West Spring Street house. He reached over to the coffee pot, poured himself another cup, and looked around the kitchen: easy-to-clean cabinets, good stove, gas, of course – out this way power was unreliable. New bump-out window over the sink where Addie had kept her pots of herbs and flowers, and the fancy border trim that he and Mike had put up the year she took sick. The border had a garland of fruit and flowers, bright and pretty, and her thin face lit up when she saw it finished. “Now that looks nice. Freshens up the whole place,” she’d said. The border was a bit soiled now. Since Addie’s death three years ago, his housekeeping had slipped considerably. He had to admit, though, that the kitchen looked decent, even if he’d never dared do what she’d really wanted, which was to tear off the old back lean-to and put on a modern addition. When she’d brought that up, Nick had had to think fast and invent some drainage problems. “I don’t think we can alter the footprint,” he’d

98 janice law told her. Instead, he’d redone the living room and had the roof lifted at the back. That gave them some decent headroom in the master bedroom, which sure made a hell of a difference in the summer. Course, the builder had kept saying they should just put on an addi- tion and leave the old roof line alone, which had precipitated a real set to and just about caused Nick to go with the other decent contractor in town. Nick sure didn’t know why the hell people had to be “helpful” when all that was wanted was for them to keep their goddamn mouths shut. His coffee was cold and Nick considered making a fresh pot, though his doctor had warned him that if he wasn’t careful with the caffeine he’d have heart trouble as well as emphysema. Big deal! Emphysema was going to kill him anyway, and days like today his arthritis made him wish it would hurry up. A cup of coffee more or less wasn’t going to matter, but Nick stayed planted at the kitchen table. Cold weather hit his lungs hard and he didn’t have breath enough to do much more than sit in front of the TV or park himself in the kitchen where the stove kept things a little warmer. He needed warmth. The sun. The sunbelt. Funny how things work out. There was Uncle Vinnie’s Junior, now: rehabbed and happily remarried and settled for donkey’s years in Arizona. Sent Nick a postcard every Christmas to tell him how much he’d like the desert. Addie would have tried Arizona. She’d always wanted something a bit more suburban, with nicer houses, real lawns. She used to worry about the schools for Mike and Danielle. Only thing they’d ever really argued over and though he’d stood firm, had to, it about broke Nick’s heart to say no, to say they couldn’t afford. He’d told her they’d need the money for college. Though in the event, Mike went straight into the Navy, Danielle had gone to the state college and come out with a good degree in information tech, so Nick guessed he’d been right after all. Outside the wind was getting up and though he’d put a hell of a lot of insulation in the walls, he still had to jack up the thermostat on a windy night. Cold front coming through, according to the Weather Channel, and now Nick was certain sure that the rattle he heard on the

cheap rent 99 porch roof was sleet. Goddamn. The porch steps would be icy and the town would be after him again about sanding the walks. They should check out the neighbors who left snow on the walks to cover their trash. Still, Nick knew he’d have to take a look, no matter what; in his situation it just never did to attract attention. He struggled up from his chair and stood leaning on the table to ease his arthritic hips. His doc would have done a replacement for him, but, with the emphysema, surgery put his lungs at risk. Besides, Nick didn’t like to leave the house. Once a year – in January – he took off for the south at the kids’ insistence, and the heat and sun were marvelous. Totally built up, sure, and every Florida road a madhouse, but Nick never minded. The beach was the thing: no matter how crowded it was behind you, there was the sea, running out green and blue to the edge of the horizon, giving you space to breathe. Coming home after one of those trips, Nick always felt as if he was stepping into a meat locker. He hated the cold when he climbed out of the car in the icy driveway, and he hated the neighbors’ houses squashed up against his yard without even a tree between, and he hated the closed up air of the house and the sound of the door banging shut behind him. Everything in his life would have been different with a bigger yard, with fewer neighbors, with space to breathe: that’s a true fact, Nick thought. The kids were always after him to sell up and go south. Listening to the sleet – it definitely was sleet – rattling on the roof, Nick let himself think about doing just that. He could take his pension from the container company – thirty years’ worth of humping boxes and supervising the dumbest and least reliable guys in the universe. Thirty years. You could almost say a life sentence. Nick stood for a minute, still hanging onto the table, and thought about life sentences. Was thirty years right? Or was it only twenty- five? If they really wanted you locked up permanent, it was life plus ninety-nine years, but he thought “life” was thirty years. Then there were lesser charges and parole. People were sometimes paroled. Either way, thirty years was a long time, so after thirty years, a guy was maybe entitled to save his life and get out of the northern winter. He could sell

100 janice law up, perhaps buy one of those big RVs and live on the road in perpetual summer. Nick thought he could handle that, but instead of lifting the phone and punching up the local real estate office, he went to the basement door and opened it and looked down into the small, dark cellar. Uncle Vinnie had been proud of the cellar, and, remembering that, Nick thought it was a little scary how everything had been laid out in front of him: everything that was going to make his life impossible. The other houses had dirt floors in the basement. Not Uncle Vinnie’s. He’d actually dragged Nick down to show him there was cement all round and even a slab under the crawl space. Even there! Nick should be grateful for this, Uncle Vinnie had said, he wouldn’t have to worry about mice – or worse yet, squirrels, or rats up from the river. And Nick had to admit that they’d never been bothered by vermin, that the basement stayed bone dry. Just the same, he’d never liked to have the children playing down there, and Addie really had bent his ear before he’d agreed they could put a ping pong table under the stair. With her gone and the children grown, Nick hadn’t been downstairs in quite a while. No need; he stored his canned goods in the kitchen, recycling went on the porch until collection day. He could almost forget about the basement, and he’d gone as far as talking to a realtor once. Had a friend of his from the local Century office come over and look at the house – this was just after Addie died when he was feeling reckless and unsettled. “Kept up nice,” said his friend, making notes on his clipboard. “Kitchen’s pretty modern; living room and upstairs bedrooms good sized. And when those condos get finished in the old mill this whole area’s going to appreciate in value. You might get ninety thousand, more likely right now with the market, somewhere in the eighties. I think I could guarantee you not much less than low eighties.” Nick shrugged. “You’re city water and sewage here – right?” “Sure thing.” “I thought so, but I wondered because of the tank under the crawl space. Old water tank? Not a second oil tank, is it?”

cheap rent 101 “Naw, it’s not hooked up to anything.” “Lose it,” said his friend. “People see old tanks they think toxic waste, old oil – whatever. Got someone to help you lift it?” “Sure,” Nick said, and his friend talked on about the transfer station and problem waste and the horrors of asbestos, but Nick knew right then he wasn’t going anywhere. He could hear Michael asking, “What the hell’s in this, anyway, Dad?” and the sound of the second barrel shifting inside. “Beats me,” Nick could say. “Was there when I moved in.” And Michael would say, “Let’s open it up. There’s a crowbar in the garage.” Standing at the top of the stairs, Nick wondered seriously what was left. Thirty years! But sealed up. He’d hammered the lid on the smaller barrel real good and then lifted everything – amazing how strong he had been in those days! – into the second barrel and hammered that lid on, too. Then he’d rolled the whole deal across the floor and humped it somehow into the raised crawl space under the kitchen, where, screened by a partition (with a small door for plumbing access) it had lain until his friend the realtor said “Lose it.” As if Nick had had any choice in the matter! The houses were close together; even the yard was claustrophobic. The old French Canuck lady on the north side used his comings and goings in lieu of TV, while the Portuguese family on the other side kept a big, fierce dog that ran along by their wire fence, barking and snarling the minute Nick stepped into his yard. He’d thought of that and – all right – he’d panicked. Then, finally, he’d thought of the barrels out back that he’d gotten to burn trash in and saw a way, if he could just keep his nerve. Of course, that way had been hard and nasty. Nick remembered morning had come before he was finished. Standing at the head of the stairs, he remembered how he’d gone back up to the sour disorder of the living room, which he’d seen as if for the first time: the air blue with smoke and carrying a strong whiff of pot; the litter of empty beer cans and wine bottles dispersed around the two old chairs, the red, castoff couch and the scarred coffee table. Despite his uncle’s disapproval, 487 West Spring Street had been the party house for him and his gang of friends: Henry and David from the warehouse, Peter from the body

102 janice law shop, ‘Superego’ from the local college, and their assorted girlfriends, acquaintances, and connections. The only one he still saw was Peter, who owned the garage now in town and had five kids and absolutely no nostalgia. The others had gone with the flow, drifting away on illusion and chemicals. Nick had worried long and unnecessarily before he understood that they didn’t notice, or didn’t care. Why should they when they’d spent every week- end lying around thinking they were changing their consciousness when they were really just getting drunk. Of course, the whole Sixties thing left a nasty taste with Nick now because of the barrel. Without that, he’d have remembered smoky all- night parties, an atmosphere of languor and possibility, and the potent sonic acid of Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, music strong enough to dissolve the routine of the warehouse and the ugly neighborhood and all the signs that this was it, that Nick had reached a dead end. Not that Nick accepted that. No way, especially after Uncle Vinnie got on his case about the parties and noise and general disorder at 487 West Spring Street. He, Nick, was getting out, heading west or south – and how different things might have been if he had nursed the truck all the way to Georgia, Florida, or Texas. Maybe no better but a damn sight warmer, that’s for sure. He’d started making plans, cut down on the parties, bought less beer. In the summer, he took on an extra shift at the warehouse and put every cent extra into the lock box he kept under his bed. So, while Henry and David and Superego talked on about Frisco and LA, Nick was accumulating the means to leave Uncle Vinnie, the warehouse, and 487 West Spring Street behind. And yet he lingered. Nick stepped down two steps on the basement stair. He could see the edge of the ping pong table, boxes of Danielle’s books from college, Michael’s football pads and high school helmet. Everything would have been different, he thought, but for a vague, blank faced girl, neither pretty nor homely, with waist length hair and a mighty tolerance for pharmaceuticals, who arrived with Superego and never really went away. She called herself Rain Flower, which didn’t sound as stupid then as it did now, and materialized at every party,

cheap rent 103 silent, remote, obliging – or indifferent – take your pick. Nick found it easy to get used to pleasure without complications or responsibilities. His legs quivered with the strain as he remembered sunny, late winter afternoons, when he’d return from the warehouse to find Rain sitting crossed legged on his porch, “meditating,” she said. “What do you meditate about?” Nick asked. “Nothing,” she said. “I’m trying to reach nothingness.” She spoke with a kind of eagerness that in retrospect gave Nick the creeps. At the time, he’d just invite her in and let events take their course. With these visits from Rain – “rainy weather” was his joke – winter turned into spring and spring began to nudge summer. Still, he was determined to go and he began hinting as much to her. “You gotta find a place for the fall,” he’d say as they lay on his mattress sharing a joint. “I’m heading out. No more warehouse for me.” “Sure,” she’d say, her large eyes focused on some unimaginable dis- tance. “Sure you will.” “Why do you think I’ve been working double shifts for?” “And buying cheap dope,” she added – for an indiscriminate con- sumer, Rain had a fussy sense of quality. “All to feed the stash,” Nick admitted. “Won’t be any different there,” she said in her slurred, curiously toneless voice. “What’s different? Life’s just the way it is.” Nick knew that conviction was despair, was his enemy, so he kept talking about going west, going south, and pushed her to make plans for the fall, to straighten the frayed edges of her life. He was not so insistent, however, as to push her out the door prematurely. What he secretly wanted was for her to find a place but to stay around with him until he was ready to go. Instead, she left before him. He took off one hot weekend to go bass fishing in Maine with an older guy from the warehouse. Nick returned late that Sunday afternoon when all the kids in the neighborhood were out with bikes and toys and most of their mamas and papas were sitting drinking beer or soda on the narrow front porches. He got out of his truck to find his front door standing open. Nick humped the cooler full of ice and gutted bass into the house,

104 janice law slamming the door behind him. No one in the living room, though from the mess of spilled beer and discarded butts and the penetrating odor of hemp, someone had had a party. The kitchen displayed the usual litter of cups, plates, and half eaten pizza. He called upstairs, got no answer, and cursed under his breath: not smart to leave the place unlocked. It would have been like Rain to party all weekend and float off without a thought for his stuff. With a jolt of anger and alarm, Nick raced up to his bedroom, dropped to his knees, and felt under the bed. He came up with his lock box, smashed and emptied. Nick stood swearing in the middle of the room, upset enough to consider phoning the police despite the incriminating state of the living room. He was about to do just that, when he heard a sound. He walked along the hall to the smaller, second bedroom where he found Rain lying on the bed, chalk white and remote. Nick’s first thought was that she’d been attacked by whoever had robbed the house. “Rain! Rain, what the hell happened? You all right?” She did not move her head but her black, dilated eyes moved slightly in his direction. Nick now took in the litter of bottles and pills and realized she was stoned out of her mind. “Who was here?” he demanded. “Somebody broke into my lock b o x .” She sighed, a long, heavy sigh that turned into a groan and put both hands down onto her flat white tummy and bit her lip. “I needed it,” she said. “What do you mean? What’s happened?” Nick demanded. He knelt on the bed beside her, frightened, furious. He took her shoulder. “What the hell did you do?” He started to shake her and demanded his money, but really his freedom, his future, his chance. She gave a shriek and swung both her arms, striking his face with her long nails. She’d favored decorated nails, Nick remembered, and had spent hours painting little flower or yin-yang designs on them. He never liked Addie to paint her nails, and he’d been furious one time with Danielle when she gotten artificial nails with red, white, and blue stripes on them at the mall. Nick coughed and began gasping: they’d really insulated the heat

cheap rent 105 pipes to keep the first floor warm and as a result the basement always had a chill. He clutched the stair rail and climbed back to the kitchen, to warmth and light. He closed the basement door behind him, turned the key in the lock, and staggered over to a chair to catch his breath. He hadn’t bothered to put the overhead light on and the room was in shadow; beyond the windows, the street and the little scrap of yard were white with snow light. He supposed she’d hit her head. He sup- posed that. A struggle, her hysteria, his anger, that’s what he supposed, but nothing was very clear to him. Hadn’t been at the time and had only gotten murkier since. He’d gone downstairs, angry, leaving her to sleep it off. Had told her this was it: she was leaving. Had made himself clear. She groaned in response and he’d noticed the heavy odor in the air but paid no attention. It was dark when he went back upstairs. Next door, the Portuguese family was having a big barbecue in their back yard; Nick could hear children playing and the fierce dog barking. On the other side, the old French Canuck lady was sitting on her porch watching her tele- vision through her open sitting room window. Sunday night. What would have been on? Bonanza? Ed Sullivan? Jack Paar? Nick couldn’t remember. He’d called from the top of the stairs. No answer. He’d walked down the hall and switched on the overhead light, dazzling him and illu- minating Rain, lying at an awkward angle with her head against the flaking metal bars of the headboard. Nick had seen her bluish face and white arms and her flat white tummy and then one white leg and the red mess that at some point had poured out of her body to stain her legs and groin and soak the sheets and her dress and the mattress. “I’d needed it,” she’d said, and now Nick saw what for. Jesus Christ! He’d gone downstairs and been sick in the kitchen sink. He’d found an old bottle of whisky and drank as much as he could of that and threw that up, all the time telling himself that he was in shock and in panic, but really, and Nick could see that now very clearly, he was waiting, because in the bottom of his heart he wanted Rain to be dead. He didn’t want to save her; he didn’t want the complications, which he

106 janice law knew would be heavy. Sitting in the snow light, Nick understood that very clearly. He’d waited and waited. The party went on and on outside. He could hear the old woman’s TV and children passing back and forth on noisy Big Wheels and cars cruising slowly by with their stereos thumping. But no matter how late he waited, Nick knew he could not make him- self venture into the yard or to his truck. Then he thought of the barrels, and he went outside without turning on his back light and got them. The fierce dog ran back and forth along the fence snarling, until Nick chucked a piece of brick at him. Then he rolled the barrels to the basement hatchway and wrestled them downstairs. After he’d wrapped Rain in the bloody sheets – no doubt of her status when he checked on her that last time – and brought her down stairs, he’d found she was too tall for the barrel. Nick had known what he had to do and without hesitation he’d gone to the kitchen and got the equipment to do it. He’d felt fear not grief. Just a fear of discovery sufficient to keep him in a state of semi-panic that lasted for several weeks until he realized no one cared. Rain had come and gone; the front had moved through. When Henry and David and Superego joked about the last great party, Nick had laughed and said it wouldn’t be the same anymore without her. He tidied up the basement, built the partition, endeavored to forget. Sometimes, he thought about the truck, about backing the truck right up over the sidewalk and somehow getting the barrels up the stairs alone and getting them into the truck and driving out into the state forest and digging a pit, but just the thought alone exhausted him: he never wanted to touch the barrels again. Never. So he stayed on, got a better job, lived the dead end life without feeling the pain of it, without feeling much of anything. A year passed. Another. He was out on the back stoop cleaning off his hunting boots one day when he heard a scream from the neighbor’s yard and ran to the fence. It was the Portuguese woman, old, Nick had thought then, but she was probably twenty years younger than he was now. She was kneeling on the grass and she gave another terrible cry. Nick saw that

cheap rent 107 their fierce dog was lying on its side, its muzzle gray, its legs faintly twitching. The woman made another anguished sound and only then, confronted by grief, had Nick felt sorrow, felt regret. He came around through their yard and helped her bury the dog, which was gaunt with age but still muscular. Nick noticed the scars on its face and along its flanks, but whatever its history, it had died old and lamented. The woman went into the house and brought out a towel and wrapped the animal in it, while Nick dug out a rectangle deeper than needed. The woman thanked him and laid her hand on his arm. “He was a good dog,” she said. Nick remembered the tears in her eyes. For a time after this, not just the barrel, but Rain, herself, appeared in his mind. Although he was not Catholic, he visited St. Philip’s because he knew they lit candles for the dead, and he felt this was a display of grief that he could manage. The church was dark inside and rather cluttered with stained glass and saints’ images; he put money into the little black iron box, lit a candle, and felt marginally better. On a subsequent visit, he met Addie, who lit a candle once a week for her mother who’d died of cancer some months before. They got to talking and fell in love. Then there were children, whose noisy, happy voices filled up the house, and Nick had no reason to think of Rain any more. He felt in his pocket for his inhaler and took a deep puff. He’d get his breathing in order, and then he’d take a can of sand from the bucket on the front porch and do the walk before it got any worse. Maybe do a pass with the shovel first and then the sand. He didn’t like to have trouble, complaints, another effect of the barrel and its contents, which Nick saw now had shaped his entire life for good and for bad, and molded him into a personality quite different from the man who’d come home from a bass fishing trip and found himself as short of heart as he now found himself short of breath. He got up from the table with slow, resentful effort; he’d been young a long time and then, without a moment’s preparation, he’d become old. It was, he thought, the weight of the barrel, which, as the house had emptied, had expanded to fill more and more of his imagination.

108 janice law Just the barrel; even if pressed, he could barely remember Rain’s face, just her long, straight hair, and one thin leg with a bright wash of blood down the inside. What he thought of was the barrel, the fact of the barrel, the concealing of the barrel, as if his responsibility had always been to it and not to the person inside. Nick put his coat on and opened the door. The snow was light but blowing steadily and there was still some sleety rain mixing in. He pushed the snow shovel along the walk, turned out around the pair of thick, neatly pruned yews, and made a half hearted pass down the sidewalk as far as his property line then back the other way. It was very cold and he knew he should be inside, but under the inch or so of snow the pavement was slick. He struggled back up to the porch, leaned the shovel against the wall, and scooped out a coffee can full of sand. He put some on the steps, which seemed to waver uncertainly in the cold, before shuffling down the walk to sprinkle sand as far as the neighbors’ line. Before he was finished, Nick was wheezing badly and his chest hurt. The whitened air took on a bluish cast, and as he started coughing, a faintly purple tinge. I must get inside, he thought. He started toward the house as fast as he could go, hurrying the last ten, twelve feet. He was almost at the steps when he stumbled on one of the uneven slabs and fell heavily. The empty can rolled away down the walk. Nick heard its rattle and tried to lift his head, but the steps turned black with odd, psychedelic red dots. He knew he had to get up, he had to get inside. Nick braced his hands against the slick coldness of the walk and levered himself to the first step. He reached out for the tread in the darkness and felt the riser like a wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again: still darkness, still a pulsing sea of spangled red dots. He felt the ground cold and the edge of the step, solid, and darkness, darkness overhead, and every sound muffled, even his own voice, hoarse and despairing, an unintelligible, barely audible whisper, as if the barrel had closed around him at last.

cheap rent 109 a The first Jason knew about it was a story in the Express & Star. A 46-year-old woman had been found dead on a train between Walsall and Aldridge. Cause of death unknown. The only sign of violence was the paint on her face and hands, which might have been daubed on before or after her death. The police wondered if it was linked to cult activity. They gave her name: Gail Warner. There was no photo. At the end of the brief report, the journalist noted that in the last year, two other dead people in the UK had been found smeared with paint in the same way. It wasn’t such an unusual name. He wasn’t even sure the age was right, though it was close. If it was the same person, did Mark know about it? They probably hadn’t stayed in touch – teenage lovers never did. Jason might have stood a chance with Gail if she hadn’t been wrapped around Mark like a pale ribbon. A few times they’d turned up late for a meeting of the Yardbirds, looking flushed and gratified. Jason had bitten through his lip thinking about it, still had the scar. But then Clare had come along and it had ceased to matter. The gang’s name came from Yardley, where they’d all lived. It seemed very distant now, like a film he’d seen in his teens. The Swan Centre, their main stamping-ground, had recently been knocked down. The knot of reeking subways in front of it had been replaced by a concrete walkway over the Coventry Road that trembled from all the cars pass- ing through. Yardley felt more like an airport than a district now. You couldn’t stand still without getting vertigo. Jason felt restless. Being reminded of the past wasn’t good for him. But it was too cold to go out for a walk, and he had work tomorrow so

110 joel lane the pub wasn’t a good idea. He walked around the house, mentally list- ing the repair tasks that needed his attention, knowing they wouldn’t happen any time soon. What you can’t sort out, you have to walk away from. But why had he stayed here? The posters he’d put up to cover the damp in the hallway were looking bruised. The gang hadn’t been that bad. Clapton’s Yardbirds were probably guilty of worse crimes. At least on record. Most of it was running: handling stuff for the big boys, passing on messages, occasionally breathing down some unwashed neck or helping some no-mark to have a small accident. Nothing to give Richard Allen sleepless nights. Like the Krays, they’d only hurt their own. The hurting had got out of hand. It always did. Four cigarettes later, he phoned his old mate Darren in Walsall. They’d worked together in a security firm back in the nineties, driving cash and prisoners across the region. Then Darren had joined the police force. He knew about the Yardbirds – at least, he’d heard the radio edit – but he wasn’t the type to moralise. It was all just work to him. Darren took the call on his mobile. They swapped greetings. As usual, Jason had no recent news. Darren had got divorced, and something bad had happened in Aldridge that he couldn’t talk about. Then Jason asked him if he’d heard about the dead woman on the train. “I think I used to know her. Was she blonde?” “Not when our pathologist saw her. Someone had smeared green paint on her hair and forehead. There was more paint on her hands, but it was different – a kind of blue, like she was cold. Pastel colours. Skin paint, like they use on stage, not industrial paint. What kind of nutter puts make-up on a dead wench?” “The paper said it might be a weird cult of some kind. Apparently there were two more deaths like that last year.” “Not around here, there weren’t. But it could be a cult. Some internet thing maybe. Too few and far between to be connected any other way.” “This dead woman. What did she look like?” “Skinny and pale. Her hair was grey. Might have been blonde once.” “Thanks. It’s not the girl I knew.” He wondered if Darren could tell

by night he could not see 111 he was lying. “I’ll see you around, mate. Take care.” “Stay out of trouble, you.” Jason snapped his hinged phone together. The living-room door was closed, but the house felt colder than before. The faint ringing in his head might be a distant siren, an echo of static on the phone, or just a headache coming on. After several failed attempts, his virus-ridden computer let him access the web. He searched for the combination of ‘dead’, ‘head and hands’ and ‘paint’. Most of the links were to academic websites on religious art, but one led him to a story in the South Wales Evening Post. A body washed up in Swansea Bay last autumn had been identified as that of Mark Page, a businessman in his forties who’d lived in the city for nine years after leaving Birmingham. Police were unable to explain the traces of paint on his head and hands. They suggested it had to do with cult activity or gang warfare. Either way, drugs were behind it. Jason switched off his computer and sat in the dark for a few min- utes. The phone rang, jarring his skull. He stumbled downstairs and picked up the receiver without speaking. It was Darren. “Just spoke to a colleague, Theresa, who knows about one of the other cases. The body of a middle-aged man was found on an industrial estate in Man- chester, half eaten by rats, with green paint in his hair and blue paint on what was left of his hands. About nine months ago. They never did identify him. Don’t suppose you’ve got any idea who it was?” “How would I know?” Tony Matthews. “Course not. Silly of me.” Jason flipped his middle finger violently at the damp-stained wall. “Well, see you around.” His head was aching so badly he thought he was going to throw up. A few minutes kneeling over the toilet bowl, the chemical odour of the blue disinfectant scouring his nostrils, produced no offering but a trickle of colourless fluid from his mouth. Mark, Gail, Tony and me. But something was missing. He’d locked away the memories and they’d rotted in the dark. He needed a key. No, he needed a drink. There was nothing in the house. Jason locked his front door with trembling fingers, stared up and down the narrow road. He didn’t know what for – but if it knew him then surely he would know it.

112 joel lane The pub on the corner was packed, but he managed to struggle to the bar just before eleven. Some pubs had late opening now, but not this one. He ordered a double Scotch and a double vodka, and took them carefully away from the bar before pouring one into the other and gulping the mixture like wine. A cold fire spread through his gut, lighting him inside but making the pub seem darker. An old drunk stumbled into him and backed away, raising his hands in apology. Jason stared at the ruined face, the swollen red nose. Too few and far between to be connected any other way. Back at the house, he unlocked the door to the box-room. Dust was smeared over the cases and boxes he’d shut away here. The grey carpet was littered with mouse turds like tiny black commas, punctuating a story he didn’t want to read. Any suitcase he opened might release blind memories on tattered wings, flying around his head. Just as the fear reached a point where he’d have to curl up and hide his face, the light glinted on the rusty lock of a black briefcase. He’d long since lost the key, but his claw hammer ripped away the leather flap easily. With the hammer still in one hand, he reached inside and took out the small gun and the clip of bullets. Never used – at least, not on something alive. He lifted it to his mouth, kissed the side of the barrel. That night, he slept with the loaded gun on the bedside table. He’d find a quiet place to test it. As sleep wove its cobwebs against his face, pulling him down into a stillness where no memory could find him, Jason whispered an old verse silently to himself. He had no idea what it meant. But then, it had never been anything but nonsense:

Far and few, far and few Are the lands where the Jumblies live Their heads are green and their hands are blue And they went to sea in a sieve

Near midnight, the canal was deserted. The moonlight glinted from broken factory windows and outlined shapeless masses of weed and dead leaves on the water surface. There was no colour anywhere. Jason

by night he could not see 113 made his way cautiously down the slope from the trees opposite the Yardley cemetery, then followed the barely visible towpath towards Digbeth and the city centre. Across the dull water, the backs of derelict factories were coated with mould. The night air was so cold you had to breathe it in before it released the smell of decay. The last time he’d been down here, there’d been narrowboats on the water and lights in the factory windows. A generation ago – but he’d made no children to grow up, and neither had Clare. They’d walked this way together, as far as the old church at Bordesley Green. Where the fencing gave way to a cluster of workshops and brickyards, easy to break into from the canal side. Ahead of him, the city lights hung like a dripping constellation. He thought he could see a faint red light among them, making its way towards him. The gun was a hard weight against his ribs. It had to be Danny Vail – but why had he waited so long? Like water in a bar- rel, accumulating worms and decay before it finally overflowed. He’d always been mad. A little pale-faced Jewish boy with a hook nose they’d teased him about, called him ‘Dong’ after the Edward Lear poem they’d read in the first year. The Dong with the luminous nose. But Clare had liked him, and had relieved him of his virginity before deciding she needed something harder. He’d broken up with her when she joined the Yardbirds. Jason had made a play for her, of course, and she’d gone as far as slow kissing with him in the cinema on the Coventry Road. But that was it. Tony hadn’t got much further, and Mark wouldn’t have dared try anything with Gail around. But Jason had got more and more obsessed with Clare. She was the boldest of the gang: the one who stole for the challenge of it, ran the most dangerous errands, got out of trouble with an innocent smile and a clean pair of heels. He’d come to believe that the thrill of petty crime was the only kind of sex Clare was interested in. But he’d still taken every opportunity to watch her at a distance, eavesdrop on her conversations. And one night he’d seen her emerging from a garage with Terry Joiner – who was a grown-up criminal, one of a serious local gang called the Finish. When they’d gone, Jason had slipped into the unlit garage and seen the

114 joel lane evidence. Picked up the used condom and sniffed it, jealousy pulsing through his brain like sheet lightning. A few days later, the Yardbirds’ main capital – a stash of banknotes and speed wraps worth nearly five hundred pounds – went missing. Only they knew where it had been hidden, in a builder’s yard off the Grand Union Canal. Jason went to Mark and Gail, told them he’d over- heard Clare talking about it with Terry. “She said she wants to join the Finish. That was the price of her getting in. That and…whatever else she was giving him. I saw them come out of a garage.” The five of them walked out from the Swan Centre, on a winter night like this one. Maybe a little colder. There was ice on the black water. Clare wasn’t keen to go, said she was feeling sick. Had she guessed what was coming? Jason avoided looking at her, when usually he couldn’t look at anything else. They reached the unlit yard, crawled through the gap in the chain-link fence. Mark took a torch out of his shoulder-bag, as usual. Then he brought out a coil of rope and a kitchen knife. Clare just stared at him. She wouldn’t talk. Denied there was anything between her and Terry. Said the Yardbirds was the only gang she’d ever wanted to belong to. Stared hard at everyone else, one by one, when Gail started talking about the missing speed and cash. “Tie her up,” Gail said. And then the beating started. Jason felt sick and excited at the same time. It went too far, they were too young to stay in control. The knife was used. Then Clare broke and confessed to everything. How she was already in the Finish. How she’d handed Terry the stolen stuff. How she’d give the Yardbirds anything they wanted, any way they wanted, if they’d let her go. And all the exhilaration of victory drained from them, leaving only chill and darkness, when Gail said “We can’t.” It was Tony who knocked her out, using one of the bricks that littered the yard. They half-filled a canvas bag with bricks and tried to put her in, but she wouldn’t fit. So they tied the bag around her waist and lowered her into the canal. There was no moon that night, and Jason hadn’t seen her face in the water. That hadn’t stopped him seeing it since.

by night he could not see 115 A few weeks later, most of the body came to the surface. The police talked to the Yardbirds – he suspected Danny was responsible for that – but there was no evidence. How could sixteen-year-olds possibly be involved in that? More suspicion fell on the Finish, who had to clear out of the region for good. The secret broke up the Yardbirds, of course, and Jason lost touch with the others before he’d even finished school. Thirty years of nothing. And now this. Where the chain-link fence had been, a rusty sheet of corrugated iron was lying flat on the gravel. Beyond it, he could make out a few bags of rubbish and a loose coil of razor-wire. A grey rat crept out of the shadows towards Jason, then stopped. Jason pulled out the gun and fired, missing the rat. The sound echoed from the blank factory walls. He’d bought the gun with the money from his first job, cleaning old car parts in a garage so they could be sold as scrap. It had taken him a long time to raise the money. He’d never used the cash, or sold the powder, that he’d taken from the builder’s yard and hidden in the misshapen stone bridge further along the canal. For all he knew, that package was still there. That was the first real lesson he’d learned: you can never pay back.

The house was in Sparkbrook, near the ruins of the Angel pub. Nearly ten years since the tornado had blown a tree into its roof, but no sign of any repair work. Even after midnight, some of the Asian groceries on the Stratford Road were open for business. Jason had parked half a mile away to avoid being noticed. He approached the house warily, but there was no light in the windows. The front yard was heavily overgrown with brambles and shrubs. The door needed a new coat of paint. All the curtains were open. Looking for Danny Vail on the internet had been a long shot – and finding his name in the Birmingham Mail online had been a shock. He was the contact for an educational theatre company that went to schools in the Midlands. It had to be the same guy – Jason remembered he’d been keen on drama. So he hadn’t been able to leave either. They’d lived within five miles of each other all this time, but Jason didn’t

116 joel lane remember seeing him since they’d left school. If he could find Danny, then Danny could find him. It was time to act. His breaking and entering skills were rusty, but he was well pre- pared. Down the side alley and through the fence, smashing a few rain-blackened planks. Over the chaotic back garden to a window that hadn’t been cleaned in years. Glue sprayed on the window, a bin bag stuck over the glass. A few gentle taps with a rock hammer and the glass came away like burnt skin. No sound anywhere in the house. The smell of damp and bleach. He drew the gun and walked slowly up the unlit stairs. In the bedroom, a crumpled single bed with no occupant. There were two flattened cans on a low table. Jason twisted the catch on one. Some kind of paint, was it face-paint? There was more in the other can: one blue, the other green. Narrow fingers had left grooves in the paint. The next room was a kind of study, with bookshelves and an old wooden desk that even had an inkwell. The walls were covered with sheets of paper. Jason moved his torch-beam over a few of them. They were photocopies of pages from old books – Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, others he didn’t recognise. Nonsense poems with grotesque Victorian illustrations. The books on the shelves were all children’s books, fifty or more years old. They smelt faintly of decay. One book was lying on the desk, face down. An antique copy of Lear’s collected poems. Jason sat down and put the loaded gun by his right hand. Then he opened the book. A thin scrap of paper fell out. A cigarette paper, with something written on it in tiny old-fashioned script. He had to hold it against the back cover of the book to make out the words:

There was a young lady named Clare Who died with green weed in her hair And her hands that were still Turned blue from the chill Alas, there was no-one to care

by night he could not see 117 Was that someone moving downstairs, or just the sounds of an old house settling in the night? Jason switched off his torch. There was no light on the staircase. He was still holding the old book. A faint scratching sound – probably mice. Then the door swung open silently. He glimpsed a tiny skull-like face with a red light attached to it. With a dreamlike slowness, he lifted the gun. It was only as his finger curled on the trigger that he realised the barrel was pointing at his own head.

The shot echoed in the still house. Danny thought the whole district had blown up. The intruder’s face tore off like a mask, exposing the ruin behind it. The desk was coated with blood. Danny stood for a while, shaking. He’d got to phone the police. But there was something he needed to understand first. Why had the burglar been sitting in the dark? He’d known there was someone here from the shattered living- room window. But the power cut had stopped him putting the light on. Instead, he’d found the face-torch that he wore for cycling after dark. He didn’t know why the intruder had shot himself. Nor could he explain the green paint in the dead man’s hair or the blue paint on his hands. It looked rather like the make-up he’d been using for the new children’s show. Could this be one of his colleagues? He couldn’t recognise what was left of the face. And despite the horror of the situ- ation, he was conscious of real anger. The madman had got blood all over his book. His special book – the one he’d read aloud from every night for thirty years, as if it were a book of prayers or spells.

118 joel lane a When her stepfather opened the door, Tina’s first thought washe looks almost dead himself. But a faint spark flared in his face when he saw her, enough to banish the sallow colour and the gaunt emaciation. Grief can do that, she thought. Grief can allow death to touch those nearby. “Oh, Tina, love!” Edgar clutched her so tightly she could feel his heart fluttering beneath the layers of bobbled cardigan. His unshaven chin scratched her cheek. The moment seemed to last forever. Perhaps he sensed her discomfort, because he stepped back into the hallway timidly, almost apologetic. “Come in, love, come in.” His voice sounded frail. Shadows moved in the far reaches of the hallway. As she entered the sitting room she could hear her stepfather’s frantic breathing behind her. The air was stale and compressed. She perched on the cushion of a drooping armchair, its springs groaning mournfully. The tightly-shut curtains denied the room daylight. Tina watched her stepfather’s list- less movement, partly wanting to give in to the emotion that threat- ened to consume her. She mentally asserted herself. “It’s good to see you. I’ve been beside myself with worry.” The poor light caused his wrinkles to appear more defined. He slumped onto the sofa opposite her. “And Michael’s been worried about you. He says you won’t answer any of his calls either.” He swallowed audibly. “It must have been hell for you – finding her like that…” She fought to keep her breathing level. “It was…horrible.” “I haven’t heard from you since the funeral. Michael thinks you should see a doctor, love – just till you’re back on your feet.”

what grief can do 119 “It’s been a month now. I’m fine.” “Tina, love, we’re all still coming to terms with it. But you…finding her like that on the bed…God knows how you must have felt.” She glanced round the room at the signs of disarray. Dust motes swirled in the meagre light. There was an empty plate balanced on the chair-arm, stained with dried food. The handbag in her lap felt like a dead weight. “You and Michael are all I’ve got now. He’s done what he can…but he’s got his own family, hasn’t he? He’s been worried sick.” “I know, I’ve been avoiding him.” Tina blinked slowly. She hesitated. “I’ve seen her – Mum, I mean. She’s been to my house.” Edgar sagged visibly. It looked like he was deflating. A sorrowful sigh escaped his lips. “It’s just the shock, love. You haven’t really seen her. She’s gone, love.” “No.” The word felt strong. Muscular. “I have seen her.” He sighed again and wiped his mouth. She could hear the grizzle of whiskers. “Let me make you a cup of tea.” She nodded, suppressing the urge to seize control and do it for them. Reminding herself that she was here to complete a task. He stood and moved to the door, pausing with his hand on the back of her chair. “I’ve got some of your Mum’s things for you to take with you – some bits of jewellery and whatnot. And her perfume. You know she always loved Anais-Anais. You must have bought her tons of bottles over the years.” Tina nodded curtly, leaning forward in the chair. Beyond his reach. He left the room and she could hear him pottering around in the kitchen. Her agitation stepped down a gear. The fish tank in the corner drew her attention. How she envied the languid movement of its occupant. The room hadn’t been decorated in years. It felt deliberate; as if its appearance mocked her childhood memories, reminding her of what had been altered by her mother’s death. The coffee table in the centre was littered with discarded news- papers, each one bearing a circular teacup stain. She thought about her stepfather’s life, now he’d retired. Didn’t he miss work? Had old- age changed him at all? Was he content to spend the rest of his days as

120 stephen bacon listless as the goldfish? She noticed the sympathy cards that cluttered the surfaces of the sideboard. Perhaps there were others on the windowsill, hiding behind the closed curtains. She suddenly became aware of a presence behind her, sensing a breath of movement against her neck. She turned sharply. The room was empty. Somewhere close-by she heard a rasping breath, growing louder. The door opened and her stepfather shuffled in. She realised the sound was just his slippers on the carpet. He handed her a mug of tea. She gripped it tightly, enjoying the heat against her hands. It made her feel real, alive. Tiny wraiths danced from the surface of the tea. Her stepfather lowered himself onto the sofa, staring into space, sipping his own drink. For a few moments she watched him out of the corner of her eye – this old man, now a grandfather. How many different roles had he played in his lifetime? Son, husband, stepfather, grandfather. All those years he’d worked hard, determined to provide for the family. All those nights he’d spent away from home, sleeping in the cab of his HGV lorry – had he missed them in the same way as they’d missed him? As if he could read her thoughts, he said, “I miss her terribly, you know. I always will.” She nodded. “I imagined I could still see her in the bedroom as I walked up the hill. She always used to wave to me.” “Aye.” He took another sip. “God knows why she did it. She seemed happy enough.” Tina didn’t speak. The carriage clock on the mantelpiece ticked out a calming rhythm. She thought she could hear her name whispered beneath the layers of oppressive silence, or was that just her imagina- tion? “When’s Michael coming again?” she said. “At the weekend, with Ben and Charlotte.” Tina was being lulled by the low hiss of the gas fire. It was a warm day; there was no need for it to be on. Her stepfather’s rheumy eyes looked too moist, like they were a parody of sorrow.

what grief can do 121 Tina said quietly, “She was in my bathroom last night – Mum, I mean.” Edgar ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Tina…sweetheart. Your mum’s gone, love. She took her own life.” For a second it looked like he was about to place his hand on her knee, and she recoiled slightly. “If only we knew why. If only she’d said something, left a note…” “She did leave a note.” Her words stabbed the air like a knife. Edgar blinked twice, his face a cold mask of uncertainty. She continued to speak, staring at her mug of tea. “I called that morn- ing on the off-chance that she was in. The door was locked so I had to use my key.” Her voice was like that of a machine. Precise, rehearsed. “I knew something wasn’t right – the bedroom curtains were closed. I thought perhaps she was ill. The house was freezing. I realised you’d be down at the allotment.” Now she raised her eyes and looked at him fiercely. “Somehow I knew things weren’t right. I came up the stairs and stood on the landing for ages. I called out but there was no reply. My stomach was in knots. Somehow I knew – I was frightened to look. Finally I opened the door and went into the bedroom. “She was there on top of the covers. At first I thought she was asleep, but even in the poor light I could see she was dead. There was a weird colour to her skin – nothing like it is on TV or in films. “The note was on the bedside table. And laid out on the bed around her were these.” She reached into her bag and took out a manila envelope. Her stepfather’s eyes bulged. He seemed to be holding his breath. She continued, “I read the note over and over but it didn’t register. There was too much to take in – Mum’s death, the note, these pictures.” She thought she saw his left eye twitching furiously. He wiped his mouth with a grubby handkerchief. And then, as if she was revealing her winning hand, she emptied the photos onto the coffee table. It was a jumble of faded colours and tatty, dog-eared images. Pale skin, flared collars, bushy side-burned men, spindly-limbed youths. She’d only glimpsed the pictures briefly as she’d gathered them from around her dead mother that morning,

122 stephen bacon but the depravity and wickedness depicted in them had been perma- nently seared into her brain. Her stepfather’s expression of surprise broke. He dropped his mug onto the carpet and it rolled away, the puddle of tea creeping across the carpet towards her. He looked ruptured, depleted. For the past month she’d tried to imagine what his real face was like; what salacious appearance had he concealed beneath his mask all these years; how had he looked when he’d browsed these depraved pictures? She and Michael had never seen anything other than the warm face of a loving man. But now his mask had slipped and a new expression had been revealed. His features were distorted, tears pushing from between his closed eyes. He buried his head in his hands. His shoulders shook violently. The scalp of his blotchy head was visible beneath the canopy of wispy grey hair. He looked pathetic. If she’d harboured any doubt about the photos, they were dispelled the instant she saw his reaction. He rocked to and fro, repeating “No” in a sorrowful gasp. It sounded like he was choking. Tina felt bile sour in her mouth. She stood abruptly and hurried out of the room. The hallway was cooler. She gripped the smooth handrail as she ascended the stairs. Her legs threatened to buckle. She clenched her teeth in an effort to prevent the rawness from spilling out. The bathroom was stifling. A towel was folded over the rim of the bath. It looked starched and rough. She slammed the door and threw the bolt. Condensation fogged the mirror, making the room insub- stantial and dreamlike. She closed the lid of the toilet and sat down. Her body was thrumming with adrenaline. She could hear her step­ father’s anguished wails from downstairs. It sounded feral. Even at the funeral he’d managed to keep his emotion under control. Part of her wanted to escape, to flee from this insane idea she’d formulated in the weeks since her Mum’s suicide. But she knew that wasn’t possible; the shapes that writhed in the darkness at night would not let her. The thought that she’d betray her Mum by not having the courage to follow this through…that was too much to bear. She gritted her teeth and stood, wiping her eyes on the towel. Her

what grief can do 123 reflection shifted in the mirror but the condensation made her face look indistinct and ethereal. Her features seemed undefined, like she was wearing a shroud. She drifted out. On the landing, the floorboards creaked in encouragement. She hesitated at the top of the stairs, staring at the closed door of the bed- room. Limitless sorrow engulfed her and she almost collapsed. But suddenly, as she flailed in the memories of her childhood, she became aware of the faint scent of Anais-Anais. It was subtle – maybe only conjured by her imagination – but it was reminder enough of what was at stake. She went downstairs. Her stepfather was crying. It was the worst sound she had ever heard. He looked up as she entered the room. “Tina, love, I swear I’d forgotten they were there. I only kept them because I didn’t know what else to do with them.” A bubble of snot emerged from his left nostril. “She must have found them by accident – your little hidey-hole under the floorboards is well hidden.” Tina paused. The dust coating the envelope corroborated the fact that it hadn’t been taken out in years. But that wasn’t the point. “Let’s burn them together then,” he said. “Forget they ever exist– ” “So I tried to protect you – I put them back and destroyed Mum’s note.” She enjoyed seeing him wince at this. He looked pitiful. “But Mum’s still angry. She’s been to see me.” “Tina, she hasn’t. You’re imagining it. Grief can do that.” “How could you have these things in your possession?” He sighed, resigned. “Curiosity, I suppose.” His voice was growing in strength. Recovering. “But it didn’t interest me. For god’s sake, I was married to your Mum for over thirty years.” “I loved you like you were my real dad. How could you have had these…this filth…in the house?” Her loathing was becoming evident now; she could feel it twisting her mouth and furrowing her brow, altering her voice. His eyes had lost their moisture. They were sparkling faintly. “I’d forgotten they were there, to be honest.” “Is that so?” Tina’s words were precise. She wielded them like a

124 stephen bacon weapon. Her tone lowered, quelling the anger that edged it. “There was one picture that seemed…newer than the rest.” “Newer?” He looked puzzled, frowning, the mask of uncertainty back. “Like I said, I haven’t seen them properly. Someone I used to work with gave them to me ages ago.” He shrugged. “Oh, I think you’d recognise the one I mean,” Tina heard herself say, surprised at how confident she sounded. Like she was an actor delivering lines. “The one with the young lad tied to the chair.” He was holding his breath; staring at her like he knew what was coming. “It looks at lot like the inside of your lorry.” The twitch was definitely there now, flickering around his eye like a panicked moth. He laughed delicately, hollowly. “What do you mean?” He licked his lips. She could detect the frantic swarm of thoughts firing round his head. She said quietly, “You know what I mean.” A few seconds of uncomfortable silence passed between them. Tina opened her handbag and took out a small plastic bottle. “What’s that?” She ignored him and placed it on the coffee table. “You see, I also recognised that young lad in the photo. I remembered his face from the news.” Her voice was quiet still, threatening. “He’s naked in the photo but you can see his scout uniform on the floor behind him. I googled it. He was abducted in 1986, on his way home from cubs. His body was never found.” Her stepfather frowned dismissively. He swallowed, shaking his head. “You used to deliver up round Middlesbrough, didn’t you?” A strange wheeze began to issue from him. He raised a trembling hand to his chest. His colour was mottled. “I’ll leave the photographs for you to look at. Remind you of what you really are.” Her throat tightened, altering her voice. “I hope you rot in hell for what you’ve done – to Mum and to all these other kids.” Tears fragmented her view. She fought to keep her voice from breaking. “These tablets’ll do the trick. Wash ’em all down with something from the drinks cabinet. You’ll drop off to sleep – that’ll be it. Painless.”

what grief can do 125 She sniffed. “I’ll call round in the morning and tidy everything up. Burn everything. Nobody else’ll know. Everyone will assume you’ve just done it because of Mum.” Her voice hardened. “Grief can do that.” “Tina, love…” There was a pleading tone. “I can’t. I’m frightened.” She stared directly into his eyes. “Or I’ll give the other photos to the police. Think about what it’ll do to Michael and the kids.” He glanced down at the floor. He seemed limp and depleted, like the bones had been removed from his body. She moved to the door. “Do this and you’ll be remembered as a grieving husband.” Her chin trembled. “Instead of the monster you actually are.” She hurried into the hallway. Once again the faintest breath whispered against her neck, the shadows embraced her. Just before she stepped through the front door and slammed it behind her, she heard the distant rattle of pills from the bottle. Her lungs clawed at fresh air. She hurried towards the bus stop, clutching her handbag tightly. When she was halfway down the hill she turned and glanced back at the house. The net curtains in the bed- room window were bunched together like cobwebbed dreams. If she was expecting a vague movement of shadows approximating a wave, she was disappointed. The glass reflected the slate-grey buildings opposite. She turned and continued down the hill.

126 stephen bacon a “Course we wouldn’t hurt you, mate. Course not. You be a good lad, an’ we’ll all get on just dandy, eh? No probs. Deal?” But Duffy wouldn’t answer, crouching there, the collar round his neck, the short chain stapled to a concrete block big as a suitcase: class stuff, this was, custom made, copied from some medieval dungeon somewhere. Not that cheapo S&M gear some crews use. “Oh dear oh dear. We got a silent type.” The Mick loomed over him, eyes like razors. I knew those eyes. Saw Duffy try and meet them. Fail. “Be honest with you. No point not being.” The Mick put out a hand, magnanimously. “All pals, eh? But it’s the big man says, go on, he says, take him away. Give him a scare. That’s orders, see? Though, far as we’re concerned, me and your fella there – ” a nod to me “ – it’s a wee bit break, an’ all, aye? Few days out the Smoke. So best for all of us you stop your wailing and your going on. Got that? Understand?” The eyes were really bothering old Duffy now. The Mick’s got killer eyes, blue as lighting, can make it so it hurts to look at them. “All clear then?” Duffy, summoning some final shred of courage, made a cracked-up little sound. Something like, “Yes.” “Good boy.” The Mick produced his fags. Offered. I saw Duffy hesitate, thinkit’s a trap, then take one anyway. The Mick reached down a light, all very courteous. The petrol lighter, stinking thing. No-one spoke. The Mick sucked heavy, regal drags. Duffy sipped, tight and nervous. I leaned against the barn door, feeling the .22 pressing on my spine.

scenes from country life 127 “No.” The Mick was being pally now. He’d turned his back on me, deliberately, as if to show that even this poor cringing lump made better company than I did. His voice grew soft now, almost tender. “Easier for everyone, we play it straight, eh? Me and your man here, it’s a job to us, that’s all. Gotta do it right, though. ’Preciate that, don’t you?” Nod. Nod nod nod from Duffy. “Thing is, but your big man, your big man in the Smoke? Your Mr Scobie, aye? Not happy. No, he’s not. In case you hadn’t worked it out. Thinks you been fiddling him. And doing stuff with that, that what’s- her-name, that Florrie? Flo?” He looked at me. I shrugged. And Duffy, seeing his big chance to co-operate, blurted a word. “Eh? Wassat?” The Mick looked sideways, cocked his head. “Ph-Ph-Philo-Philomena,” Duffy stuttered. “Oh aye. French piece, eh? Nice bit o’ French?” He chuckled to himself. “We never – ” “No. But that, my son, is where you fail to grasp the rules.” The Mick leaned closer. There were times he could be almost fatherly. I’d heard he’d got a kid up north somewhere, an ex-wife he’d left years ago. Married in his teens, apparently. Still sent her money, the rare times he remembered she was there. “Thing with Scobie, see, don’t matter what you done and what you ain’t. It’s what he thinks you done that counts. He’s like that, Mr Scobie, eh?” I took the prompt. “Mm-hm,” I said. “And I’ll go further. Mr Scobie – all respect to the old fucker, right? – but Mr Scobie, he’s a big man now, he’s got to watch his rep. Word gets out he’s soft, and, well…you know what happens. Sea of fuckin’ sharks, it is. That’s what he’s swimming in. And sharks smell blood they – ” He clapped his hands, so sharply Duffy jumped. “Feeding frenzy! Aye? So Mr Scobie, gotta be careful. Gotta watch his property.” He took a last drag on his cig, surveyed it for a moment, flung it to the ground. “Might not be what you done exactly. Might be more like, what he

128 tim lees thinks you done. And he thinks there’s this here Phillie Meanie messin’ him about an’ all, well…you can see how that’d burn him up a wee bit, eh? Can’t you? Course you can. And there’s the money, too, let’s not forget. There’s always that…” They talked some more. His voice had lost the hard edge now, grown soothing in a way I’d seldom heard; only the gravel from his fags gave it that timbre of authority, that depth. Soon even Duffy seemed to loosen up, uncoil. Much as the chain’d let him, anyway. “So that’s it, Duff. Got to keep you here a few days, see? But we’re not bad blokes. Like any working man, all we want’s an easy time. Eh now?” Duffy’s thin hair fell into his face. A naughty schoolboy, fifty-odd years old. The Mick gave him the smokes. He called to me, “Paul, son. Lend Duff your lighter, eh?” “My lighter?” “Go on.” “Why my lighter?” “Oh, Duff’ll give it back before he goes. Won’t you, Duff?” Duffy pulled a face, perhaps meant to be a smile, looked first at me, then longer at the Mick. He thought he’d made a friend. Poor git. I dropped the lighter at his feet. We walked back slowly to the house. Some kind of bird was calling, some sort of twilight bird, I never knew its name. The Mick kicked cheerily at clumps of grass, leaving a trail of broken sods behind. “That’s it,” he said. “Be peaceful as a lamb now. See if he’s not.” He play-punched me. “You trust your uncle, eh boy? What’d I say?” “Oh yeah. Trust you, yeah. Trust you with my life, I do…”

I’d always liked it at the farm. I should have grown up in the country, some place like this. The quiet life. The Mick was city, every inch of nerves and attitude. He never felt at ease here. It made him twitch and do weird things. But I enjoyed it. Best of all there was the smell after it

scenes from country life 129 rained, a rich smell like you never got a hint of in the Smoke, not in the parks or in the biggest garden anywhere. I tried to talk to him about it once. Stupid of me, really. “Aye, well,” opined the Mick. “That’s dirt and water, that is, see? Known locally as mud.” There were tales about the Mick. The one he liked the most was that the Provos kicked him out. That’s how he got his moniker. “Too violent,” they’d told him. “Too much fucking lunacy.” But I’d heard he was just some bloke named Donnegan or Donalbaine, Scots most like, never been to Ireland in his life. Even the accent was a fake, they said. Well, maybe, maybe not. I didn’t question him. He’d only give me some old bollocks I could live without. Another chapter in the legend of himself. He’d got this thing that even if you asked the time of day it meant you owed him somehow, he’d chalk it on your slate, and one day soon you’d find out you were honour bound (or so he said) to do some ugly little favour for him, if you wanted to or not. Better to shut up, stop encouraging the bugger. That’s my view. We’d been here other times, the Mick and me. We kept a certain distance, psychologically. I was quiet, sober, and that disconcerted him. He knew my rep but couldn’t fathom it, he couldn’t tackle the mentality. I’d turn up with the Telegraph and do the crossword while he slobbered over wank mags, twelve-year-olds with tits like beach balls, totally inhuman stuff, or cheerily regurgitated articles on bounty hunters, racing cars, or mercenaries. “Telling you, don’t matter which side wins. It’s just some wog war, see? Top fucking dollar though. You look.” “Wog war?” “Aye.” “Cannibals,” I told him. “Skin and eat you, that lot will.” “Bullshit. I’m saying, right. That’s all. Listen:There is no room for the amateur among today’s soldiers of fortune. These are men who do their job with cool efficiency. They are the top of the trade. They are profes- sionals.” His mouth moved, shaping each word separately, like a big dog chewing on a steak. “See?”

130 tim lees “I see.” I put my pen between my lips and sucked the end, ignoring him. “I fancy that,” he said. “I really fucking fancy it, you know?” “Ask Scobie for a reference.” “I could do that job!” I looked back at my paper, smiled with satisfaction, filling in another word. “Fucking could!” “Alright, alright. I believe you.” He sank into a quiet sulk. I took my glasses off and looked at him. “You know your trouble, eh?” He glared at me. It was like teasing an ill-tempered animal; you had to judge exactly when to stop, or get your fingers bitten off. I said, “You’re taking it too seriously. Think about it too much, eh?” I tapped my head. “Saying you don’t?” “Sometimes I do. Much as it deserves. But you – it’s like your whole life. It’s all you fucking are.” I went back to the crossword. I could hear him, breathing in-out like the Oxford-Cambridge boat race. “Alright,” I said. I took my glasses off again. “The way I see it, it’s just like you told chummy in the barn: it’s work, that’s all. It’s a job. No point fussing. Nice little speech you made there, by the way. But I believe it. Honestly I do. Whereas in your case,” I gestured with my spectacles, careful not to smudge the lenses, “you reckon it’s some- thing fucking wonderful, don’t you? You think it’s like being a film star or a footballer or what-all. Eh?” “Bollocks.” “Yes.” I put my glasses on. “Yes. Very witty. Good riposte.” He ranted for a while and muttered to himself. I kept my head down but I caught each nuance, every change of tone. I finished off the cross- word, put the paper on one side, went into the kitchen. We’d moved the furniture already, in case we had to do it early. “Tea?” I said. “And one for matey out the back?” •

scenes from country life 131 “Oh, you want to watch that one. Don’t let him get too close, eh? Bad news. Very, very bad.” Duffy pulled himself into a sitting posture. He looked dishevelled, bruised, and there was straw caught in his hair. A little scarecrow man. I took my cigarettes and stuffed one in my gob. “Light,” I said. He didn’t cotton on at first. Then he scrambled for the lighter, held it up. I wouldn’t take it, I let him strike the flame. “Ta.” I made to offer him a cig, then stopped myself, and stood there, watching him. “Now this,” I said. “This is a case in point.” His left eye’d come up like a poached egg, an ugly blue-grey colour, almost shut. “He’d got no right to give you that, you know. My lighter. Mine, see? I could have taken some offence at that, you know. But since the Mick and me still got to work together, I chose not to. Always a choice, right? Either-or. See what I mean?” Now I did give him a cig. I held it out. He reached for it, I pulled it back. His one good eye sought mine. It begged. I told him, “Choice, OK?” He hesitated, then took it, lit it quickly, like he thought I’d snatch it back again. Then he held the lighter up for me. “Oh no. Oh no. The Mick gave you the lighter. And I chose not to stop him. So it’s yours. Until you go, say? Shall we say that?” He nodded. “Thank you…” “Good. Remembering your manners now as well. That’s nice. Just wish that beast I’m working with was so polite. But like I say, Duff. Got to watch him. Seen him put a bloke clean through a brick wall, just for looking at him wrong. Fact. Still…you’ll be alright, I reckon. Yeah…I think he likes you. And you’ve got those manners, too. They’re nice, they are. They’re very nice. They go a long way, manners do.” I left him with his cup of tea, the faint red of his cig-end glowing in the dark. Picnic time.

“Oh, Jesus fuck!” “You need the chain saw there.” The sun was blazing down. I’d stripped off to my vest and pants,

132 tim lees relaxing in the heat. The Mick, meanwhile, was half way up a tree. He looked like King Kong but a bit less civilized. “Just giving you advice, that’s all.” “Don’t need fucking advice.” “Just telling you you’d find it easier – ” “Look pal!” He twisted round, almost falling off the ladder in the process. “The chain saw’s staying where the fuck it fucking is, alright? That clear? We do not use the fucking chain saw. Not on this.” He went back to it. He wrestled, jerked, his little hand-saw buried in the branch. “Just trying to help.” “Ought to be your job, this one, anyhow. You’re the one likes trees and nature and the shite! What’s Scobie want us doing up his fucking garden for, I want to know? Jesus!” “I still say you should cut it lower.” “Shut your hole.” “And it’s not gardening. It’s called estate maintenance. Proper term.” “I told you – shut your fucking hole!” “Fair enough.” I looked down at the paper for a while. Then I said, “Here’s one.” I did a BBC voice. “Irritating dickhead, fond of violence. Three, four. Got me baffled, that. Any ideas?”

“Religious, are you, Duffy?” I liked being alone with him. This nervous little man. This nothing, this non-entity, this person of inconsequence; the strands of hair he brushed over his pate hung down his cheek, matted with dirt. His bald spot gleamed. A few more days, he’d fall apart. “You look religious, see. You do. You look like someone with a need for…spiritual direction. Not a thing the Mick’s too hot on, I might say.” “I – I do believe in God…” “Good start.” I gestured him to carry on. “My Ma was… She was a good woman. Mass every Sunday. Never failed. Not till the end. And us kids… But…” “But you drifted, didn’t you? I know. We all drift, eh? Try keeping

scenes from country life 133 on the straight and narrow, really, really try, then – whoops. Drifted a bit. And before you know it – well. Here you are, eh? Here you fucking are.” I smiled, and Duffy followed suit, just two or three beats late. “You do it, Duffy?” “What?” “Oh, don’t be silly. I know about the money. I know that. The woman. I’m not being prurient. I’m not the Mick. I don’t want details. I’m just curious whether you did it, Duff. That’s all.” “Will it…make a difference?” “To what happens to you?” He stared, trying to read my face. I didn’t let him. “Honesty will,” I said. “I think you’re being straight – might make a diff. Yeah.” He looked down at the ground, the empty plate I’d come out to collect. He seemed to have a problem speaking; he looked like someone coughing up a tennis ball. His voice was very small, his mouth a pink hole making sounds. “Love,” he said. “Me and Phyllis. Going away. Going to Spain. Get mar- ried…” “Spain,” I said. “Full of bloody villains, Spain is.” “She’d got friends there. And she liked…she liked Spain.” Just to be helpful then, he said, “That’s her real name, you know? Phyllis. The other was…professional.” “She loved you, you reckon?” He didn’t answer. “OK, Duff. Don’t worry. I’m just curious, that’s all.” I bent down, took the plate away from him. “That’s not the problem anyway. Scobie’s got a million girls. What’s one more or less, eh? But it’s what you did with the accounts. He’s picky over those. As you should know.” I took a step, looked back. “You heard about St Augustine?” “St Augustine?” “He had a prayer. Lord, make me chaste. But not yet. Good one, eh, Duff? Good one.” His eye was looking very poor by now. Completely shut. He needed

134 tim lees some attention, really; TCP, perhaps. “I think about it lots. It means… For instance, means that I can be a bad lad, and God’ll still forgive me, long as I repent. Cheering, eh? Very cheering.” I walked towards the door. “And something else,” I said. “Don’t think I let him take the lighter ’cos I’m scared of him. Might look that way, but… Well, the Mick’s a very scary guy, I’ll grant you that. Big, too. But even big blokes turn their backs, eh?” I gave a small salute. “Enjoy your tea, Duff.” Then from the doorway, one last quip. “Shame Scobie isn’t God, though, ain’t it? Shame. Big shame.”

The Mick had roared with laughter, slapped the chair arm like a drum. This was two days back. “Scobie? Ripped off?” He could hardly talk; the air wheezed in his lungs, his shoulders shook. “By his fucking book keeper?” “That’s it. And he wants it hush as well, you prat.” “I bet he fucking does!” It was a laugh, alright: the mighty Scobie, with his fortune in the sex shops and the clubs; great Angus Scobie, pander and procurer to the capital’s elite, suave sophisticated Scobie, with his restaurants and pretensions to society – poor, stupid Scobie, diddled by some shabby little clerk he’d used for sixteen years without a peep… I let myself smile, too. Why not? It was my first sight of the Mick’s new gaff. I hadn’t missed a lot. A life of prison cells and cheesy bedsits hadn’t done much for his domes- ticity. The scent of last month’s milk hung over everything. An ashtray spilled onto the floor. I looked round for a window, but he’d nailed them shut. A cautious man, the Mick. He went into the other room. I heard drawers opening. A cupboard door click shut. “It’s maximum deniability then, aye?” “You what?” “Scobie’s orders. Maximum deniability. That’s what you call it. That’s the term, aye? Black ops speak.” I heard him chuckling to himself. “You

scenes from country life 135 don’t know fucking anything, do you?” “S’pose not.” I moved so I could see into the other room. There was a mattress on the floor, the sheets all jumbled, mags and papers strewn around. And then – I thought I knew this guy. But that’s when he surprised me. Or what he’d done surprised me, anyway. And suddenly I saw him in a whole new light. He was an artist. Him, the bloody Mick – an artist, of all things! I moved towards it, almost hypnotised. I had to see. He wouldn’t call it art, of course. He wouldn’t call it anything, he’d never even heard a word like collage – and you could tell what he’d been using it for, right off, the way he’d stuck it up there, straight over the bed, above his cracked sheets and his breakfast crumbs… But stick it in the Tate Modern, drag half a dozen critics in to drool all over it, to mutter words like “raw” and “savage” and “intense” – oh, he’d have been right up there with your little Damiens and Traceys, not a doubt. The source was obvious. Well, what else did he read? But what he’d done with it – that staggered me. The detail, the brutality… A Lam- borghini sped out from a model’s gasping mouth. A square-jawed, hard-bitten marine prepared to fire as two enormous zeppelin breasts bore down on him. A woman’s fingers parted the pink, puffy lips of her vagina, revealing, like a lipstick, the gleaming nose cone of a nuclear missile… “Oi!” The Mick was furious. “Oi! Out of here! Come gawping round – I didn’t ask you in here, did I? Fucking snoop! Oi! Oi!” His face turned scarlet then. Oh, that was just wonderful! And all the way up to the farm, I needled him, I asked him what he thought of this year’s Turner Prize, and if Picasso had been better in his blue phase or his pink one? And he growled at me, and cursed the other drivers, and only seemed to calm when we dragged Duffy from the boot and he could lord it for a while, be Mr High and Mighty… Then do that business with the lighter. Christ. A bloody artist. And he didn’t even know.

136 tim lees It wasn’t only Scobie who’d misread people, it seemed. Best of all when they’d misread themselves…

“I’ve got a sore patch.” “Chafing, that is.” I knelt beside him, looked at it. The skin was red. “Wouldn’t worry. Nothing, that.” “Can’t sleep this way. Can’t lie down. I can’t…” His one eye peered at me, and he was scared now, very scared. “You’re not…? You wouldn’t…? I gave the money back. I’ll make it up. I’ll work for him again. For free, I mean. He said I was the best – ” “And so you are, Duff, so you are. It’s like the Mick said, see? A little lesson. Orders, right?” “But, but – ” “Don’t worry ’bout it, eh? Don’t worry about anything.” I took the key out of my pocket, tossed it once, and grinned at him.

The sky was darkening. There was a smell, a cool, earth smell, and from the woods an owl called. It always baffles me that people think an owl’s call’s eerie. To me, it’s evocative, even nostalgic; that lonely, hunter’s whoop. We walked towards the house. He babbled constantly: how pleased he was, how grateful we’d seen sense, how wonderful we were, and how he’d never, never planned to rip off Mr Scobie, he’d been talked into it – threatened, he said – he’d been going to explain, only we’d got to him too soon. And there were other factors, things that he could tell us, certain persons, persons Mr Scobie trusted and weren’t worthy of his trust, and if we did a deal then he could tell us, name the names, with us to vouch for him he wouldn’t be afraid – I’d never known him talk so much. I led him round the back way. I reached out, pulled open the door, and ushered him ahead. He shuffled. Stopped. We’d done the kitchen out in polythene, huge sheets over the floor and half way up the walls. The Mick stood in the middle of the room, dressed only in his Y-fronts. I noticed they were yellowish around the crotch.

scenes from country life 137 And Duffy froze. Mid-step. “Go on, Duff, eh? The Mick’s not queer. It isn’t how it looks.” I put my hands up, ready to grab him if he did a runner. You never know how they’ll react. But this time I’d judged right. I touched his shoulder. Gentle pressure and he took a step, another, right into the room. With my free hand I reached back and took the .22 from my belt. “Won’t hurt, I promise you.” I whispered like a lover in his ear. “Won’t hurt.” I was cooing, soothing, like you’d calm a frightened child. He quivered. A kind of sob pumped up out of his abdomen and shook him from his head to foot. He’d seen the tools laid out across the kitchen top: the bin bags, ties, the hammer and the chain saw. “Won’t feel a thing. I promise you.” I pushed. One little tap. He dropped down on his knees. I bent and took the lighter from his pocket, and the sobs came thick and fast. Then he began to howl, a noise more like a wounded dog than anything a man would make. The Mick said, “Aye, get on with it.” I held the lighter. It looked tarnished, dulled with fingerprints. I rubbed it on my shirt. I flicked it and a little flame bobbed up beside my thumb. “You doing the speech?” I said. “Can’t be bothered. Waste the fuck. I’m sick of this.” “So much finesse.” Duffy was shivering. It went through him in ripples. I said, “Here, Duff. Going to count to ten, alright now? All the way to ten. One – ” The shot was loud. It echoed off the tiled wall, off the metal of the Aga, off Scobie’s genuine oak beams (genuine, but only six months old) and it set his big, glass-fronted cabinets all rattling like applause. “Shite.” The Mick picked up the chain saw, shook his head over the mess. “Let’s get it fuckin’ over with.” I reckoned it’d take about an hour doing Duffy up. Then longer for the Mick. But I’d be doing him alone. And like I say, he was a big bloke. It would have been so nice to have some help for once. So very, very nice.

138 tim lees a We all have secrets. I understand that now better than ever. It’s part of who we are; what makes us look at the world with suspicion, our eyes narrow and calculating as we lie awake in the night, probing at the mystery, the thing locked inside each one of us that has the capacity to change everything. Like a time bomb waiting to explode. My memory of that night may have lost a little of its lustre over the years − for which I’m eternally grateful − but the cold heart of it is still beating, and I suspect it always will. Every now and again, when it thinks I need reminding of who I really am, the memory floats to the surface, haunting me. I see the four of us, standing by the river, altered beyond imagining by the night’s events. We exist in my mind’s eye as distorted versions of the four friends who set out that night to drink beer, tell jokes and catch fish. We are strangers to one another, the myth of our shared history destroyed. Four lonely men, locked into each others’ dreadful confidence, with the heavy weight of our frailties exposed. We all have secrets. That’s why it gets dark. To cover up the mistakes we’ve made. To make us blind to the horrors that await us as it grows light. When we look up at the fading stars and howl.

Night was already drawing in as I pulled up at the kerb and saluted Don through the windscreen. He grinned and saluted back. His face looked freshly scrubbed and I could see the red streaks where he’d been too vigorous with the razor around his throat. He looked in good spirits, which was not always the case with Don, and had gone to town with his outfit. He had on a Gore-Tex waterproof jacket and a fur-lined

night fishing 139 hunting hat. The flaps hung down over his ears. I lowered the window and laughed. “Don’t you own a mirror?” I said. “You look like a demented Elmer Fudd.” He hunched his shoulders and drew a finger to his lips. “Be vewy, vewy quiet,” he said. “I’m hunting wabbits!” I laughed again and Don joined in. “See if you’re still laughing at three o’clock in the morning when your ears are ready to drop off,” he said. I considered this for a moment, undecided. “You do know Elmer Fudd never caught anything, right?” Don stared at me, as though I was completely missing the point. “Have you brought the beers?” I nodded. “Then, by God, it doesn’t matter, does it? We can spend the entire night dwinking.” Another bout of laughter followed as Don started to load his gear onto the bed of the truck. He pulled back the tarpaulin and threw in his rucksack, a tackle box, a large landing net and a black Cordura rod tube. I had already secured my own gear in there, along with two tents, a sack of heavy stones, a large box of kindling and firewood, and four crates of assorted Belgian beer. Each crate contained twenty-four bottles. I also had four different single malt whiskies stashed in the glove compartment at the front of the truck. I smiled at the thought of all that booze and realised that, if I closed my eyes, I could almost trace the happy pattern of the night. The truth was, despite having the right gear and a lively enthusiasm for it, we were all hopeless at fishing and were happy to admit it; but the one thing that we could all proudly claim was that we knew how to handle our dwink. Don opened the passenger door and climbed into the cabin. He looked well. His eyes were bright and his pores weren’t sweating liquor, which meant he hadn’t spent the early part of the week downing Scotch. Since Jackie had passed away, Don had found himself locked in a downward spiral. The cycle of depression had hit him hard. The last time we met Tommy and I had been forced to call an ambulance;

140 james cooper we had found Don face down on his kitchen floor, surrounded by pills. That had been two months ago. Since then, Don had clearly found a way to haul himself from the rim of the abyss. “You’re looking good,” I said. “Silly hat aside.” He smiled. “Things are different, Paul. It was time to move on. This fishing trip is just what the doctor ordered.” I looked across at him and saw that he meant it. I nodded. “Good to know. You sleeping better?” “The pills put me out like a light,” he said. “And bonus: no nightmares.” I started the truck and pulled away from the kerb. “More good news,” I said. “Any of those magic beans going spare?” I sensed him looking at me. “Things still no better between you and Jill?” I stared at the darkening sky through the windscreen. “It’s a long story.” “I don’t need the whole shooting match,” Don said. “Just give me the highlights.” I pictured Jill’s face and found it difficult to imagine her smiling. What I conjured instead was my wife screaming at me across the breakfast table, her cheeks red, her eyes bullfrog-wide with hate. “No highlights, Don. Just the usual domestic shit that even I’m too bored to recount.” We drove in silence for a while. The blowers hummed and slung heat at us. I tried to figure out the link between Elmer Fudd and my hysterical wife, but realised there was none. This was just how life was sometimes, carefree one minute, deadly serious the next. The whole outcome was pure chance, like the roll of a dice; if I had the power to positively affect it, I’m not even sure that I would. “How’s William?” Don said. William was my five-year-old son, the only thing in my life that hadn’t been eroded by the misery of my marriage to Jill. “Good,” I said. “He’s learning to play the piano. Sounds fucking awful.” Don laughed. “You should have brought him with us. We could have taught him how to be a man.”

night fishing 141 I returned Don’s laughter, but felt a sudden chill at the thought of William witnessing four bitter fools chugging whisky chasers through the dark underbelly of the night. That was one rite of passage I knew I would always be happy to delay. I was looking forward to taking William fishing, but it would be on my own terms, not accompanied by three soaks who were even more consumed by the sauce than I was. He would learn like I did, when the dice was rolled, and the time to teach him felt right…

My first fishing expedition was with my father and Grampa Bill. I remember sitting in the back of the car with the fishing stink of Grampa’s tackle box beside me; it smelt like a rotting corpse. Not that Grampa was deterred. He was cheerfully breathing it in. “Best damn smell in the world,” he said. “Lets you know you’re alive. Take a deep breath, kiddo. It’ll clean that nasty city air from your lungs.” I did as instructed and was almost violently ill. I spent the next minute or so coughing and spluttering. I wound down the window and breathed in fresh air while Grampa bust a gut in the front seat. He turned to look at me. “Least you had the stones to give it a try,” he said. “That’s what counts, buddy.” He and my father exchanged a glance that I was unable to decode. My father said nothing. He simply drove on. He looked tired, I thought. Not for the first time I wondered if he really wanted to be here. It made me sad to think that he might not. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, but I didn’t know how. I was angry at myself; I wanted to make it all better. It occurred to me that, at some point, I must have done something wrong. When we arrived at the lake, Grampa arranged our gear on one of the concrete jetties. He had two fold-out chairs. I had my red bucket which he filled up with water for me. I held it in my hands, waiting. This is where I would store all the fish. He showed me how to set up the rod and attach live bait to the hook. We were using maggots. Grampa had stored them in one of Grandma’s sandwich tubs and I knew he’d catch hell for it when he got

142 james cooper home. When I peered into the tub, I was fascinated; the maggots were a wriggling mass of life. “Try not to touch the bait too much, Paulie. Your fingers give off a stink that will drive the fish away. These buggers ain’t stupid, you know.” I watched him fix the bait to the hook and skilfully cast the line into the lake. He took the red bucket and handed me the rod with a grin. “Hook a biggun, Paulie!” I took the rod and looked around for my father. I wanted him to see me holding the fishing rod. I wanted him to be happy again. I glanced towards the car but he was nowhere to be seen. I scanned the rim of the lake and finally spotted him on the opposite jetty. He had his hands dug deep into the pockets of his coat. He was staring at the horizon. His black hair was blowing in the wind. He looked lonely, on the edge of something even he couldn’t quite understand. It was as though Grampa and I didn’t even exist. I remember feeling close to tears that day. Not because my father had excluded us, but because I sensed even then that he was conflicted. We all have secrets, even fathers. When he died of bowel cancer six months later I recalled our first and only fishing trip together. It was like a tuning fork, ringing softly in my head, and I fell into a silent trance of recollection. It all came flooding back: the smell of the tackle box; the live bait; the red bucket lying empty in the mud. And beyond all of these, I could see my father, standing on the concrete jetty, being buffeted by the wind. He wasn’t disappointed, I realised, and he wasn’t angry. He was just a man with a secret, terrified of what the future might bring.

When we arrived at the river Tommy and Jeff were already there, parked up and pitching their tent. In the dusk they were no more than shadowy outlines and I started to consider for the first time just how dark this place would become once the sun completely disappeared. I found myself secretly praying for a full moon. They helped us guide the truck through the narrow opening between the hedgerow and I pulled up alongside Tommy’s battered Ford.

night fishing 143 Don opened the door and jumped out. “This the queer convention?” he said. “I hear it gets pretty dirty after lights out.” Jeff pointed a finger at him and assumed a sinister redneck accent. “Mister, I love the way you wear that hat…” Tommy joined in with a rendition of duelling banjos and the four of us started to laugh. It felt natural and relaxed, and I began to feel myself unwind at the prospect of spending a drunken night in the com- pany of old friends. That I misjudged things so badly tells you more about how desperately we needed this to work than it does anything else. We needed to reconnect. I think we all sensed that our friendship depended on it. We needed a break from the debris of our normal lives. As I climbed from the truck I glanced over at Tommy and Jeff. It was like looking at polar opposites. Tommy was tall and imposing with a face like chiselled stone. His eyes were as dark as the riverbank and his smile, when it deigned to appear, was slight, no more than a gentle upturning of the mouth. Tommy, of the three of them, was my clos- est friend; he was the one I would always turn to whenever I needed advice about Jill. If the other two were aware of this, they kept it to themselves. What went on outside of the group was our own damn business. Just another secret among many, I suppose. I glanced at Jeff and watched him help Don unload the truck. Small and wiry, Jeff had about him all the grace and finesse of a rodent. His face was ugly and hard, like a butcher’s block, and in a certain light it looked like it had been forged beneath a stampeding boot, the heel grinding out flat, incongruous features, none of which ever looked like falling neatly into place. Jeff was a stand-up guy, but his need for constant validation of everything he did could be exhausting. I often wondered about him. Of the three of them, I thought Jeff had the most to lose if we fell apart, though now I’m not so sure. Given what happened, perhaps he had the most to gain. We spent the next hour establishing a fairly impressive base camp twenty yards away from the bank of the river. The tents went up in no time at all, Jeff and Tommy in one, Don and I in another. We lined them with tarpaulins and space blankets. We then laid out sleeping

144 james cooper mats and down sleeping bags, just in case we needed to recharge in the middle of the night. If the temperature dropped rapidly, the booze would numb the brain but it wouldn’t insulate us. We needed to ensure we had a warm place to which we could return. We hung a Coleman LED lantern from the ridge pole and left it switched on. Within the next thirty minutes light would be at a premium. It occurred to me that we should have done all this several hours earlier, but none of us were experienced outdoorsmen; we were hardened drinkers. It was probably the only thing that we could all honestly confess to doing well. Once the tents were up, we set about establishing an ideal spot from which to fish. We didn’t expect to catch much, other than a serious hangover, but if one of us got lucky, we wanted to make sure we had everything ready to land the damn thing. I’d been night fishing before and the most hostile element was always the dark. While the other three set up the rods and the chairs close to the embankment, I began unloading the rest of the stuff from the truck. I positioned a crate of beer next to each chair, which produced the loudest cheer of the night so far, and then took the sack of stones and the firewood downwind of the tents and built a camp fire. It was far enough away not to scare the fish and close enough to provide an additional source of heat and light should we need it. I arranged the stones in a circle and assembled a pyre of kindling. I lit it and began adding larger pieces of dried wood. It wasn’t long before the first logs were added and the bright flames began licking at my face. I smiled. Mission accomplished. I glanced over to see how the others were getting along and my smile turned into a grin. They were sitting in the folding chairs watching me, each with a bottle in their hand. They raised them at the same time, saluted me, and laughed. I offered a salute of my own.

I sat in the chair, and looked up at the sky. The night was closing in fast. Sadly, there was no sign of the moon. To my right, the camp fire was giving off an intimate glow. I could hear the logs crackling and spitting as they burned.

night fishing 145 “Okay, gentlemen. It’s time to light up.” I had advised everyone to buy high powered LED headlamps. We pulled the straps over our headgear and switched them on. “Jesus, do these things have a dimmer switch?” Don said. The intensity of the light was blinding. “Pivot the lamp towards the ground. That way we won’t feel like we’re being interrogated every time we look at one another,” I said. Tommy seemed confused. “Won’t the light scare away the fish?” “Let’s get a few beers inside us before we completely commit to the dark,” I said. “And make sure you know where everything is.” Don trained his lamp on the crate by the side of the chair. “I know where the beer is,” he said. “Will that do?” I shrugged. “It’s as good a place to start as any.” I sat back and relaxed. They’d done a good job setting up the rods. They were balanced on bank sticks and rod rests and Don had activated the bite alarms. If there were any takers, we’d hear the buggers before we’d see them. That was what I liked about fishing, I realised. Once the equipment was properly assembled, there was fuck all to do but drink. The sky was darkening still further and we each sat in an arc of light as the lamps tracked the jerky movement of our heads. There was a distance of roughly six feet between each one of us. On our left were our tackle boxes and landing nets. On our right was a crate of Belgian beer. I smiled. We had everything we needed for the perfect night. “Everybody good?” Tommy said. I watched his profile flicker in the distant firelight. “I do believe this is what the yanks call living large,” Don said. “You still working on that novel, Tommy?” I asked Tommy was separated from his wife and had just entered his twenty-fifth year of teaching English at a large inner-city secondary school. He, more than most, deserved to lose himself in the booze. He had never had so much time on his hands and had decided at the start of the year to write a novel. Last time I asked, which was over two months ago, he told me he was on chapter three. “Yep, still battling the terror of the blank page,” he said. He only talked like this when he was discussing his book. The rest of the time

146 james cooper he was as crass and cynical as the rest of us. Maybe worse. “What chapter are you on?” He turned his headlamp and stared at me. “Four.” I raised the beer to my lips and took a long swallow. “You’ve written one chapter in two months?” He shrugged. “It’s a long chapter,” he said. I heard Don and Jeff laugh. I smiled too, but I felt a little hollow inside. Tommy’s project was grinding to a halt, just like all the others had: the exercise kick, the landscaping, and the ill-conceived renovation of the house. If anything defined Tommy it was this: that nothing he ever started ended well. “What’s it about?” I said, trying to catch him off guard. I had asked him this question a dozen times, but he’d always played his cards close to his chest. I was hoping that sitting here in the dark, mellowing out, might encourage him to finally open up. He said nothing for a moment and I could sense Don and Jeff also straining to listen. They were clearly as intrigued by Tommy’s novel as I was. “It’s about a man,” Tommy said, “who’s lost everything.” “I like it already,” Don said, “it rings true.” And I heard Jeff mutter: “Shut the fuck up.” Tommy had grown silent. He was nervous. He knew he was taking a risk. “Go on, man,” I said. “So this guy’s lost everything,” Tommy said softly. “Including his wife. And to win her back he decides to take up his sword and set out on a quest across a land called Kreflad − ” I suspect we all wanted to jump in at the same time, but Don got there first. “What the fuck! Have you lost your mind? You’re writing some fantasy shite?” He started to laugh and it was hard not to join in. Tommy looked distressed. “Bollocks!” he said. “I knew this would happen. I fucking knew it!” We were ramping up the laughter and Tommy was becoming more and more flustered. Jeff almost fell out of his chair.

night fishing 147 “It’s just a fucking book,” Tommy said. “That’s all.” I stopped laughing for a moment. “Yeah, but we all thought you were trying to write the great English novel. And you’re not. You appear to be writing about elves.” More laughter. “I think he said Kreflad,” Don spluttered. “Honest to fucking God! Kreflad!” Tommy sat back in his chair and surrendered to the laughter until eventually he threw up his hands and joined in. It was a good moment, a pure moment, one that I look back on and realise was probably the last intimate moment we would have. Tommy took the banter as it was intended and it felt just like old times, when we were close, before life took away the last resistance we possessed. Don spent the next hour calling Tommy Kreflad and we laughed together as we drank hard, listening for the bite alarm. We kept the fire going and slipped into bivvy bags to keep warm. We talked and joked and the hours fell away behind us. Around midnight, the mood darkened. That’s when we snagged the dead body, and from that moment on, everything around us changed.

I met Tommy in a pub in town. He had called me out of the blue, told me it was an emergency, asked if I could meet him. He sounded desperate; he also sounded afraid. I walked into the pub and saw Tommy in one of the booths. The lighting was low. He was seated in shadow. He was facing the door, waiting for me to arrive. He raised his hand and I acknowledged him. I went to the bar, ordered two pints, and then walked back towards Tommy. He was watching me carefully. He was hunched over the table. He looked diminished, physically shrunken. I realised he looked ashamed of himself, and I wondered what the hell he had done. I eased myself into the booth and sipped at the pint. I looked at him over the rim of the glass. I waited for him to begin. “’Chelle’s left me,” he said. “For good this time. She went mental. Said I don’t treat her with enough respect. Told me I was an unfeeling bastard who never paid her any attention. She trashed the house, Paul.” I watched him for a moment, not quite sure what to say. It was no

148 james cooper real surprise. Tommy and Michelle had been in flux for over three years. She had left him half a dozen times already; each one, according to Michelle, the last. “Maybe she’ll come back,” I said. “She’s done it before.” Tommy shook his head. “Not this time. I smacked her. Hard. I think I might have fractured her skull.” I raised my glass, took a long slug of the beer. I tried not to look at Tommy’s eyes. “She might be fine,” I said, hating myself even as I said it. Tommy was a big man; any kind of physical assault from him would inevitably leave its mark. “No. I heard the crack. She went down like she was throwing a fight. There was blood all over the floor.” I paused, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. It occurred to me that Tommy might have done more than break Michelle’s skull; he might actually have killed her. I looked across the table and stared at him and realised that this thought had crossed Tommy’s mind, too. “What did you do?” He wiped his hand across his mouth and breathed heavily. “I called an ambulance and then came here,” he said. “Then I called you.” “Was she still alive when you left?” He looked confused, frightened, like a child who knows a severe punishment is due. “I don’t know. I think so.” I failed to hide my frustration. “Why the hell didn’t you check?” Tommy placed his arms on the table and I noticed that his hands were shaking. “Because I was fucking terrified, Paulie. That’s why.” He was growing agitated and I placed a calming hand on his arm. “Take it easy,” I said. “Have a drink.” He did as I instructed. “Now, tell me what happened. Why were the two of you fighting?” “It was the usual stuff. She thought I was cheating on her. She said I treated her like a domestic whore.” I waited. I removed my hand from his arm. “Are you cheating on her, Tommy?” His eyes turned dark and I saw what Michelle must have seen only moments before her husband struck her across the head. Then they

night fishing 149 lost their fire and Tommy sighed and closed his eyes. “I slept with someone,” he said softly. “Once. Maybe twice. It’s not something I’m proud of.” I nodded. If he was comfortable admitting to having cheated twice, the real number could easily be into double figures. “Okay,” I said calmly, trying to suggest that we were slowly making progress. “So if she was onto you, why the hell did you hit her so hard?” “Because she was making me so fucking mad, Paulie. Screaming at me and throwing shit across the room. I guess I just lost my temper with her.” I looked over towards the bar. I didn’t want to look at Tommy right then. I was afraid of what might be reflected in my eyes. I thought of Michelle and how much shit she’d had to put up with. Tommy out on the piss till all hours. Turning up drunk the next morning at school. The formal warnings. The cheating. The humiliation. And now this. If the poor cow was still alive, I hoped to God she’d have the nerve to report him to the police. It was all the miserable bastard deserved. “So what should I do?” Tommy said. He looked at me and, for maybe the first time in my life, I felt disgusted with him. Worse, I felt sickened that I was seated opposite him, offering lame advice. At that moment, I had no desire to be Tommy’s closest friend; he was revealing a side of himself that left me feeling cold. That dark rim of his personality that I’d always known existed had rotated in my direction and I suddenly wanted to be as far away from the man as possible. “I don’t know,” I said, finding the truth easier to come by than a lie. “What’s your heart telling you to do?” Tommy looked exasperated. “Weren’t you listening? I don’t have a fucking heart. I just have this enormous fucking headache. I need help here, Paulie. I need to know what to do.” “You have two options,” I said calmly. “You go to the hospital and sit by your wife’s side.” He shook his head, imagining the ramifications of taking personal responsibility for his actions. “Or,” I added, “you don’t.” There was a pause while I washed away the dryness from my throat with the beer. “They’re your choices, Tommy.”

150 james cooper He stared at me. “That first one,” he said. “I don’t think I can do it.” I smiled sadly. “No,” I said. “I don’t suppose you can.”

When the bite alarm sounded we had grown quiet, listening to the comforting sound of the fire to our right. We had turned off the headlamps and were waiting for the big fish to come feeding in the dark water. The beer had increased our optimism. If we could hook a monster before we left, the trip would have been well worth the effort. We also knew that if this was to happen, it would have to be this side of midnight, before the fishing took a back seat to the more serious business of finishing off the booze. So we sat and waited. Tommy smoked a cigar and we could see the orange ember glowing in the night air. Bottles clinked as we worked our way through the crates of Belgian beer. I could hear Don singing under his breath. It sounded like an old blues song. The melody drifted over us and helped us block out the cold. For a short time, we seemed to forget where we were. When the bite alarm sounded, it was like a reminder that sobriety was slowly drifting away. Initially, no one responded. The damn things had proved sensitive to all kinds of vibrations on the line and we had grown used to the high pitched bleep of countless false readings. This time, though, the noise continued. I could also see the red LED light flashing angrily on Don’s alarm. I turned on my headlamp and trained it on the water. The bobbin on Don’s line was dipping fast. “Bottles down, gentlemen. We have an intruder.” We clambered out of our bivvy bags and the others switched on their lamps. Four bright lights bounced across the water. I didn’t know about anyone else, but I could barely see straight. The beer had dulled my senses. I thought I saw a long shadow rising from the riverbed on the end of the line. The flickering light didn’t help; I couldn’t get a handle on what it was Don was attempting to land. Until I heard Jeff gasp somewhere to my left, and Tommy said, “Holy shit. I think it’s a fucking body.” Don dropped the rod and fell backwards into his chair; the shadow in the river disappeared. We stumbled to the embankment and directed

night fishing 151 the lamps on the disturbed water. “Try again,” I said to Don. “But this time don’t let go.” I pointed to Tommy, who was by far the strongest of us. “Get the net and help him land it. Haul it as close to the bank as you can.” Don and Tommy took up their positions. I noticed how quickly we had all sobered up. I could feel the cold air licking at my face. “It’s a fish, right?” Jeff said. “It’sgot to be a fucking fish.” He shone his light in my eyes and I lowered my head. “Fetch the tarpaulin from the truck,” I told him, just wanting him out of the way. “It’s a body, Jeff. We all saw it. Anybody think we should cut it loose?” Nobody spoke. The light from the headlamps washed across the river. “Fine. Then let’s get the bloody thing out of the water.” Jeff ran off in the direction of the truck; Don and Tommy worked the line. As the body emerged again from the depths I could see the bloated development of the flesh. It was face down. The back was slen- der and pale. I felt myself gag; the river had already been hard at work eroding it. The fish that had followed its journey downriver had clearly made a lasting impression, too. Tommy had the landing net in the water and was guiding the body towards the bank. Jeff arrived with the tarpaulin and we laid it out as close to the edge as we could. I knelt on it and dipped my hands into the water. It was bitterly cold. “Get down here, Jeff. I can’t do this alone.” I could hear him behind me; his breathing was heavy, as though he had just finished running a long race. I thought he was about to object, but he knelt on the tarpaulin and plunged his hands into the river. We all had our headlamps aimed at the body. It looked like a woman. I was almost too terrified to turn her over to see if I was right. My brain was screaming at me to leave everything just as it was and call for the police. To just let the body float on the surface of the water while I puked up about a dozen bottles of beer behind the truck. But I knew this was impractical, even as the thought entered my mind. If the body slipped off Don’s line, the river would reclaim it instantly. There was

152 james cooper every chance it would never be recovered again. The authorities were hardly likely to trawl the river in the middle of the night. No, this was the only morally appropriate action to take. I knew it; we all knew it. I suppose that’s why nobody spoke. I moved my hands through the water and brushed up against the side of the body. I felt sick with dread. My gut instinct was to pull back, but I fought it and grabbed hold of the decomposed flesh. A chunk of it came away in my hand. I turned and vomited by the side of the embankment; the regurgitated beer burned like acid as it rose in my throat. “We need to lift it,” I told Jeff. “Straight onto the tarpaulin. Grabbing it’s no good. It’s too degraded. It’ll just fall apart.” I heard Jeff mutter, “Jesus. Toodegraded ,” and wished I had the time or the inclination to rephrase. “On three,” I said. “Lift and roll. Okay?” Jeff’s silence was enough to indicate assent. I gave the count and we lifted the body onto the tarpaulin, turning it in the process. It came out of the river dripping water and trailing weeds. By the light of Don’s lamp I saw a woman’s bloated face. Half of it was missing. The half that was remaining had been partially devoured by fish. I looked away and considered how quickly the night had turned. I could hear Jeff vomiting loudly into the river. I leaned over the embankment and did the same. When I’d rid myself of the last of the beer, I rose to my feet and repeatedly wiped my hands on my trousers. “Mother of God,” I said softly. Don joined us, and we gathered in a rough circle around the tarpau- lin, staring at the body. I don’t think any of us knew what to say. After a while, Jeff said: “What the hell are we supposed to do now?” None of us could take our eyes off the red meat of the woman’s face. She would be impossible to identify in her current state. In places she looked like she had been run over by a truck. Her body had been dumped naked. Or she’d removed her clothes before she’d given herself to the river. Either way, she was a mess. What had happened to her once she was in the water I tried not to think about. I hoped to God she had been long dead before the first fish were attracted to her eyes.

night fishing 153 I saw Tommy reach into his coat and produce his mobile phone. The tiny screen illuminated his face. “No service,” he said. “It shouldn’t matter,” I told him. “Try 999. If that fails, try 112.” Don shone his light in our direction. “Do we have to do that right away?” he said. “I could do with a drink. I’m not sure I’m ready for the fucking circus to arrive. I feel numb.” I glanced across at Tommy. “You okay Don?” I shone my light on his face and he looked like the rest of us: pale, tired and in shock. “As soon as we make that call we’ll be spending the rest of the night giving statements to the police. I’m just not sure I’m ready for that yet.” Tommy shrugged. “I don’t think our friend will mind.” I heard Jeff chuckle, but it sounded forced, nervous, like a child’s response to fear. Tommy returned the phone to his inside pocket. “Maybe we should crack open the hard stuff, Paulie. Just to fortify the spirits.” I nodded and went to fetch the whisky from the truck. When I returned, the other three had rolled the tarpaulin over the body and gathered around the fire. Their faces danced in the orange glow; I think we were all glad of the sudden heat. “Paper cups, I’m afraid.” I handed them out and poured large meas- ures of whisky into each one. We faced the fire and said nothing. I turned off my headlamp and the others did the same. I wondered what they were thinking. I watched them out of the corner of my eye. Jeff and Tommy were sipping at the whisky; a little colour had returned to their faces. When I looked across at Don, I was surprised to see that he still looked ashen, despite the heat from the fire. The paper cup was trembling slightly in his hands. “How do you think she got there?” Jeff said, the liquor finally loosen- ing his tongue. “Anyone’s guess,” I said. “But she’s been down there a long time. Her body felt like soap.” I knocked back the whisky, welcoming the afterburn; the taste of vomit at the back of my throat had quickly been scorched away.

154 james cooper Tommy was shaking his head. “Damn,” he said, barely audible above the crackling fire. “Fucking soap.” We fell silent again. I refilled my paper cup. I could sense the tarpau- lin behind us, waiting to be dealt with. I wondered if the dead wom- an’s lungs had ballooned with river water. I tried to imagine what she might look like inside. “I reckon she was murdered,” Jeff said. “She looked like she’d been beaten pretty badly around the head.” Jeff’s observation sent a chill down my spine. I remembered Tommy confessing his secret, revealing the tough love he’d dished out to Michelle: I smacked her. Hard. I think I might have fractured her skull. The similarities were startling. I jolted myself from my reverie and said, “If the body was carried along the river bed, those injuries could have been caused by rocks and whatever other garbage is buried under there. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.” Jeff pressed the matter. “But why was she naked? If you were going to commit suicide, why would you remove your own clothes?” “There are no easy answers to shit like this, Jeff,” Tommy said, sound- ing angry. “There never are. You just have to accept it for what it is.” Jeff turned his full attention to Tommy. I thought he looked excited. I wondered why it had taken me so long to realise that I didn’t like him very much. “And what’s that?” he said. Tommy stared at him and I realised he didn’t care for him very much, either. “It’s nothing, Jeff. To people like you and me, that’s all it is. Nothing.” At that moment, as the four of us gazed into the fire with the body of the decomposed woman wrapped in the tarpaulin behind us, it was hard to disagree. Sometimes life was hard to fathom; death, too. That’s about as much as we could be sure of. In the simplest terms, when confronted by the inexplicable, life and death appeared meaningless. Just look at the woman, I thought. When you ended up as fish food, what other conclusion could be drawn? I glanced across at Don. He had pulled his chair close to the fire and

night fishing 155 had his hands wrapped around the cup. He was gazing into the flames. “Don? You okay?” I saw him shake his head, as though he were fighting something inside. Then he said: “Still a little dazed. That woman… Christ.” I nodded, feeling much the same way. Only Jeff seemed to have recovered himself enough to break the silence, and I hated him for it. “I wonder what kind of life she had,” he said. “She might even have been married with kids.” “Does it matter?” Tommy said. He still sounded irritated that Jeff was articulating the very thoughts the rest of us were trying to suppress. “It matters to someone,” Jeff said. “Someone out there is about to receive some pretty awful fucking news.” Again, it was hard to argue. Don’s line had hooked one of the river’s secrets and now it was out. Pretty soon it would be the story on everybody’s lips. The tale of the four guys who had gone night fishing and landed themselves a corpse. Don had been right, when word got out it would be a media frenzy. Our lives would never be the same. I sat back in the chair and enjoyed the warmth of the fire. Despite the strange turn of events, I was in no hurry for the night to end. I had no interest in being the next day’s news, and clearly none of the others did either. We sat and drank, as we had done for most of the night. I threw another log onto the fire and watched it catch. After a long silence Don said, “I think I want to look at it again.” We all turned and stared at him. He was peering into the heart of the fire. He seemed smaller somehow, even in the Elmer Fudd hunting hat. He had his head hunched low towards the flames. “Don’t worry,” Tommy said, “that bitch’ll be appearing in your night- mares for months, Don. You can take a long hard look at her then, same as the rest of us.” He shook his head and looked at Tommy. “I’m serious,” he said. “I think we owe it to her. I think we should pay our respects.” Tommy turned away in disgust, muttering something inaudible under his breath. I leaned over and placed a hand on Don’s arm. “I think we’ve seen enough horror shows for one night, Don. Don’t you?”

156 james cooper He turned his dark eyes in my direction. “We pulled her out, Paul. Is a simple prayer too much to ask?” There was a quiet dignity about Don’s proposal and I felt an utter shit for being so churlish about it. I wondered if he was remembering the tragic passing of his own wife and then realised that he had to be. I sighed and looked away. “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t expect anyone else to join me. I’ll do it on behalf of all of us.” He began to walk towards the tarpaulin and I heard Tommy say, “What the hell’s wrong with him?” It didn’t matter. Whatever was driving Don to pay his respects, he had left us with little choice but to join him. The alternative was to look like a bunch of heartless bastards while Don recited a short prayer to memorialise the dead. Tommy might have been comfortable with that, but I wasn’t, and neither was Jeff. By the time Don had pulled back the tarpaulin to reveal the body, the four of us were once again arranged around it in a rough circle, our heads bowed. I stared at the body and was grateful that this time there were no lights. Just the distant glow of the fire. I breathed a sigh of relief; it didn’t look quite so bad in the dark. “Who wants to speak?” Don said. I peered at his shadowy form on the other side of the tarpaulin. “It should be you. You’re the one who remembered.” He nodded. “I only know the Lord’s prayer.” “Then do that,” I said. “Jackie would be proud of you, Don. I know she would.” He stared at me for a moment and then slowly delivered the prayer. At the end we all mumbled Amen and then stood around feeling un- comfortable. Don smiled, looked at us, and said, “Thank you.” We smiled back. Don lowered his head. “I’m not sure…” he said, struggling to find the right words. “I have to…” We watched him in the dark and waited. “What is it?” I said. He looked up. “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you all for the longest time,” he said. “Something I need you to know.”

night fishing 157 • When I arrived at Jeff’s flat I felt a reluctance to climb out of the truck. The last thing I wanted to do was set foot in his apartment. I’d been in there once before and it was a pigsty. I had no desire to go in there again. I took out my phone and gave him a call instead. “Hello?” “You ready to go?” “Not quite,” he said. “Where are you?” “I’m at the kerb, waiting. You’ve got three minutes.” I glanced up and saw the curtains part in one of the windows. His rodent face appeared in the crack and smiled. “Come up and have a drink,” he said. “I’ve got something to show you.” I tried to think fast but realised that, short of telling him his place was a rat hole, I had no decent excuse with which to work. I attempted to politely decline. “I can wait. There’s a new Mahler Symphony about to start on Radio 3 .” “Bollocks. Come on up. I’ll crack open the beers.” The phone went dead and I reached over and turned off the radio. I was a little disappointed; Radio 3 was my guilty secret. I was actually recording the Mahler at home. It would be my treat after I’d showered and washed away the grubbiness of an evening in the company of Jeff. I sighed and climbed out of the truck. I entered the dingy block that reminded me of a juvenile detention facility and ascended the stairs. The door to Jeff’s flat was already open and I could hear some godawful indie music vomiting out of the stereo. I braced myself for an exhausting night. “Jeff?” “In here.” I stepped over a toppled heap of papers in need of recycling and walked into Jeff’s flat. It was one large room that incorporated a living space and a kitchenette. Two doors had been built into the east wall; one was the bedroom, which not even God’s divine intervention could have persuaded me to enter, and the other was the toilet. I wasn’t keen

158 james cooper on entering this room any time soon, either. Jeff was sitting on a collapsed orange sofa. He was poring over a large scrapbook, drinking beer; there were scissors and a glue stick on a nearby table. He was surrounded by pictures. “Here,” he said. “Take a look.” I moved across the room and watched him smiling at me. I didn’t like the low light dancing in his eye. I sat beside him on the sofa and felt the sunken springs dig into my behind. I picked up the scrapbook and stared at the first page. I remember wanting to grab him by the throat. “Shit,” I said. “Is this Carly?” He nodded. I realised he was grinning and I couldn’t understand why. He was showing me his secret and he thought it was cool. To Jeff, this offering was an act of sharing; it was how he bound himself in friendship to those he most trusted. That it was such a misguided expression of love was hardly the point. “This is your girlfriend, man.” I threw the scrapbook back onto the table and stood up. “What the fuck were you thinking?” He looked confused, like a chastised child who has no idea what offence he’s committed. He looked up at me and his lips were pulled back, showing me a string of yellow teeth. “I thought you’d get a kick out of it,” he said. He watched me, hoping I’d see the funny side. I didn’t. All I saw was a man with no sense of where the boundaries were. “Me and Carly. We’re not that tight any- way. She won’t be around for long.” I hit him then. My arm snaked out and I cuffed him, hard, around the head. “All the more reason to show her some respect.” He pulled away from me and sank into the broken sofa. He looked forlorn, like I’d shattered his world view, and he stared at me as though an alien had entered the room. “I just thought you might − ” I cut him off. “You thought wrong, Jeff. Tommy might find this shit amusing, but I don’t. I think it’s sick. Those pictures…” I came close to hitting him again. I wanted to, but I knew that if I started I’d never be

night fishing 159 able to stop. “You should destroy them.” I turned and walked out of the room. It wasn’t the pictures that had incensed me so much as Jeff’s willingness to disclose them. That’s what I hadn’t liked. How he had grinned at me and shown me intimate pictures of his girl. It was the first time I realised how far apart we had grown; we were two men, taking the same journey, walking on opposite sides of the track.

We stood around the body and stared at Don. It was difficult to make out his features in the dark. I could smell the burning logs on the fire and the lingering decay of the dead woman. In hindsight, it was prob- ably not the best place to hear what Don had to say. “The night Jackie died,” he said, “I found out she was having an affair.” I started to move around the tarpaulin towards him and said, “Christ, Don, that’s fucking awful − ” but he held up his hand and stopped me. “That’s not it,” he said, staring now at Tommy and Jeff. “When she told me, I went berserk. I started screaming at her, demanding to know who it was she’d been sleeping with. When she told me, I think I blacked out for a moment. I don’t really remember. When I came to, my hands were around her throat. Jackie was lying dead on the kitchen floor.” Nobody moved. Four black shadows stood motionless around the body of the dead woman. The fire crackled. The river flowed relent- lessly in the dark. “You killed her?” Jeff said. Don nodded. “And Tommy fucked her. Didn’t you, Tommy?” My blood ran cold in my veins. I felt numb. I could barely process what Don was saying. Jackie had interrupted a burglar; she’d been desperately unlucky. That was all. This shit involving Tommy was like something from a bad soap opera. Didn’t Don realise that? I almost started to laugh, thinking it had to be a cleverly constructed joke, but the silence and the tension froze me to the spot. I tried to move but found that my entire body was like lead. I recalled my conversation with Tommy in the booth of the pub and wanted to scream. I slept with

160 james cooper someone. Once. Maybe twice. It’s not something I’m proud of. Of course it wasn’t; he’d slept with Jackie. He’d been fucking the wife of his best friend. And here we all were. Night fishing. Standing over the body of a dead woman confessing secrets. I inhaled long and hard and felt my muscles slowly relax. I looked across the dark space between Don and Tommy. They hadn’t moved. They were watching each other’s shadow. They were like wild animals, each waiting for the other to make the first move. I heard Tommy sigh and saw his shoulders slump. He looked ex- hausted, even in the dark. “I ought to fucking kill you,” he said to Don. I think I frowned; had I missed something? “I’ve spent weeks thinking exactly the same thing of you,” Don said. “You never loved her, Don. She told me that time and time again. You treated her like shit.” I thought again of that conversation with Tommy; his treatment of Michelle; the terrified confession. I smacked her. Hard. I think I might have fractured her skull. Listening to him now was like listening to the voice of a different man, a faceless stranger in the dark. “You think that gave you the right to claim her for yourself?” “She wept in my arms, Don. Night after fucking night. You’d be out gambling and drinking. She had nothing. Neither of you did, not as you were. The relationship was dead.” There was a long pause. Then Don said softly: “Now Jackie is, too.” The statement, uncomplicated and heartbreakingly direct, was powerful enough to break Tommy’s paralysis. He unleashed a gut- wrenching cry and flung himself across the tarpaulin at Don. Unable to avoid Tommy’s flailing arms in time, the pair of them went crash- ing to the ground, collapsing in a heap on the dead body below. The bloated cadaver practically exploded beneath the weight of the tus- sling men, and, under other circumstances, it might have played out like some kind of ghoulish black comedy. But not tonight. Jeff and I were too close. The woman’s swollen abdomen had detonated no more than two feet away from us and we were drenched in foul-smelling chunks of gore. I wiped some of the black muck from my face and eyes

night fishing 161 and hurled myself into the fray. Don and Tommy were sliding about on the tarpaulin in the woman’s detached viscera. Tommy was punching Don repeatedly in the face. I could hear the dull thud of his fist. I called out to Jeff to stop standing like a prick and help out and between us we managed to haul Tommy off Don’s torso; he was still swinging wildly with his fists. We slid him across the embankment towards the fire. “Stay there,” I told him. “Don’t move a fucking muscle. Okay?” He nodded and began wiping the woman’s guts from his clothes. I ran back to Don and Jeff and I lifted him off the tarpaulin. I glanced back. The shadowy outline of the dead woman was gone. In its place were a head, two slender legs, and a flat, sickening mess in between. We carried Don towards the fire, some distance away from Tommy, and laid him on the grass. I turned to Jeff. “Go to the truck. In the well of the driver’s door there’s a first aid kit.” He nodded and set off. I saw Tommy sit up. In the glow of the fire he looked appalling, like he’d been wrestling in a pig’s entrails. I almost laughed; it wasn’t that far from the truth. I watched him wipe a long smear of the woman’s intestine from his cheek. “Stay there, Tommy. You’ve messed him up pretty good. I need a minute here.” He was watching us closely. “He gonna be okay?” I said nothing. “He had it coming, Paulie. He killed Jackie.” And you triggered it, I thought. I looked at Don, who was moaning on the grass beside me. At least he was conscious. His face did not look good, and again I thought of Tommy’s heavy fists battering against Michelle’s fragile head. She went down like she was throwing a fight. There was blood all over the floor. Christ, what a night. Jeff returned with the first aid kit and I spent the next few minutes attending to Don’s injuries. They were mostly superficial. Cuts and bruises. One cut above the eye looked like it might require stitches. It was bleeding heavily. I cleaned it as best as I could and then dressed it. The rest he’d have to deal with himself.

162 james cooper “Can you sit up?” I said. Jeff and I helped him and he looked across the fire at Tommy. “Feel better?” Tommy shook his head. He looked disgusted, though whether it was with Don or with himself I wasn’t sure. “You still don’t get it, do you?” he said. “You and Jackie, you were finished, Don. You both knew it. You were just going through the motions. Day after day, week after week. Year after fucking year. There was no end in sight.” Don said nothing for a moment. Jeff and I looked away; we all knew that what Tommy had said was the truth. Jackie and Don’s relationship had been fucked for years. It had grown so bad, we never even asked after her when we met up; we had grown tired of listening to the lies. “I still don’t see why you thought it was okay to sleep with her, Tommy, no matter how difficult our relationship was.” Don spoke through swollen lips; his words ran into each other, like backed-up traffic. “You were my friend, man. Don’t you see how bad that is? You betrayed everything.” Tommy stared into the fire. “We all have regrets, Don. Don’t we?” This time it was Don’s turn to lower his head. “When she told me it was you, I don’t know. I just… It seemed so wrong. I didn’t care that she was having an affair. All I cared about was that she was having it with you. Don’t you see? She knew, Tommy. She knew exactly what would hurt me more than anything else in the world. By taking you, she cut me where she knew I would bleed the most.” “Perhaps you deserved it, Don. Did you ever think of that? Maybe she just wanted you to feel the kind of pain she’d been experiencing for years.” “Bullshit! She just fucking − ” Don bent over and started to cough. He held a hand to his damaged face. I touched him lightly on the arm. He shrugged it off. He stared at Tommy and said: “Did you love her?” For a minute or more, no one spoke. The wind had risen and we could hear it whistling through the nearby trees. The river continued to flow.

night fishing 163 “Would it make a difference?” Tommy said. “I don’t know. Perhaps.” Tommy smiled. His face looked hard; the anger we’d witnessed earlier was simmering just beneath the surface. “You think I’d betray a friend for anything less than love?” Don nodded; it was enough. We all knew exactly where everybody stood. Don started crying then, wailing into his blackened hands and darkening his face with gore. “Oh, Christ!” he said. “What have I done? What the fuck have I done?” Jeff and I closed ranks, but it was Tommy who sprang up and ran to his side first. He put his huge arms around him and held him firm. The light of the fire was brutal; we could see Tommy had tears in his eyes. “It’s okay,” he said, rocking Don in his arms. “It’s over. You need to move on. We all do.” “But I killed her,” Don said. “I killed Jackie.” He was spluttering hard now, the months of banked emotion spilling out. “Shit, Tommy…” Jeff and I held back; it was their moment and I think we both realised it. This had stopped being about the four of us some time ago, it was now just about Tommy and Don. “Don’t think about it, Don. It’s in the past. Okay? There’s nothing we can do.” Don raised his head in Tommy’s arms. He looked weary; his eyes were almost closed. “I can’t sleep,” he said. “I drink, I take pills, but I just replay that moment over and over again. I’m so tired, Tommy.” “I know. Maybe telling us will help. Maybe you’ll feel better.” Don pulled away and stared at him. “But now you all know,” he said. “I already feel sick with shame.” “It’s better that we know,” Tommy said. “Now we can help you.” Don shook his head. He was looking into the fire. He was remem- bering. “When she told me about you two she was drunk. We hardly spoke to each other anymore and by the time she came into the kitchen, reeking of gin, I knew she was about to tell me something awful.” He

164 james cooper held up his hands and stared at them in horror. “These hands,” he said. “How could they do it, Tommy? I…I think I hated her by then, but I’d never considered killing her. Not once. Then she said your name. Tommy. Like it meant something to her. I remember thinking Does the poor bitch even know what she’s saying? But she knew, Tommy. She knew exactly what she was doing. She said your name again and I turned away, thinking What the hell does Tommy have to do with all this? When she told me, I think I broke down.” He paused for a moment, frowning. “I don’t remember very much after that.” “You don’t need to, Don. Not anymore. I’ll help you through it. Jeff and Paulie, too.” Don smiled and raised a hand to Tommy’s cheek. “The guilt’s all mine, Tommy. No one can help me with that.” They hugged briefly and then parted. The four of us sat there, cov- ered in the dead woman’s remains. The heat of the fire felt strange, as though someone was gently stroking my skin.

“What now?” Jeff said. We had been seated around the fire for several minutes, trying to process the night’s events. I don’t think any of us felt comfortable talking. Not about what had happened, at least. The horror of Don’s confession hung over us like a black cloud, and would probably do so for the remainder of our days together. It occurred to me that our friendship might be finished; the group dynamic already felt odd and I anticipated each one of us moving on, lowering a curtain in our mind’s eye over the entire affair. “We should just go,” I said. “Clean everything up and head for home.” I handed everyone a couple of antiseptic wipes from the first aid kit and we cleaned our hands and faces of the muck that was still clinging to them. “What about the body?” Jeff said. I glanced across the fire towards Tommy. “Back where it came from,” I said. “What’s left of it. Let someone else deal with it. We’ve enough to contend with, don’t you think?” I took their silence as grudging assent. “Okay. Jeff, Don: make a start

night fishing 165 on dismantling the tents and loading up the truck. Tommy and I will attend to the tarpaulin.” We split into our two groups and Tommy and I headed towards the embankment. It felt awkward. Neither one of us knew quite what to say. In the end, we said nothing, just grabbed hold of the tarpaulin and tipped the remains of the body into the fast-moving currents of the black water. We dipped the entire canvas into the river to rid it of excess waste. We pulled it out and shook it dry; we stretched it and folded it in on itself, like a military flag. I would burn it later when I got home. “You okay?” I said to Tommy as we walked back towards the truck. “What do you think?” he said, and went over to help the others pack. Twenty minutes later we were set. Jeff left in Tommy’s battered Ford; Don and I departed in the truck. The mood was sombre; the air was cool and fresh. I waved to Tommy and Jeff as they drove away. They didn’t wave back, and I knew I’d never see either one of them again.

I turned on the heater and let the blowers warm up the truck. After a minute I glanced at Don. He was turning up his nose; the heat and the smell from the bits of dead body that still clung to us was an eye- watering mix. I turned off the heater and lowered the windows. The cold air made us gasp as I drove. A mile or so into the journey, Don said: “Take a left here, Paul. I want to see something.” I was utterly exhausted. My instinct was to head straight for home, but when I gazed at him I saw that Don was silently crying. His tears were mixing with the blood from the cuts. In the glow of the dashboard they looked pale pink. I tried to imagine Don as a killer, but found it almost impossible. He looked a wreck; physically and emotionally drained. I stared at the Elmer Fudd hunting hat and imagined him pursuing Jackie beneath a winter moon. Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits! I felt a cold hand squeeze my heart; perhaps it wasn’t so difficult to imagine after all. We drove in silence for another mile or so before he instructed me

166 james cooper to stop. I looked out at the night. I knew where we were; I’d been here many times with Jill when we were courting. The sky hung over us. It looked dense and black; it reminded me of the river. I could see dead stars fading away to nothing; they flickered and then went out. I turned to look at Don and he was already there, half-turned in the seat, waiting for me. “You understand, right?” I nodded. I thought I did. Don smiled and climbed out of the truck. He was crying again. He walked several hundred yards along the viaduct, and never once looked back. He was a black figure, growing smaller and smaller against the backdrop of the undisturbed sky. He was my friend. Eventually, he stopped. I saw him turn towards me, fleetingly, just for a moment. I could hear the beating of my heart. We all have secrets, I thought. He leaned forward, into nothing. I watched him jump.

night fishing 167 a He was standing at an open window and he was naked. He was pressing binoculars to his eyes and he was pointing them at me. It was a shock reversal of voyeurism. I was the woman being watched, peered at through binoculars, privacy invaded, possibly at risk. But he was naked, exposed, vulnerable. I turned away in embarrassment, but as soon as I did I realised how irrational it was, so I looked again. I was on my morning commute, an ordinary weekday in early sum- mer, the train slowing down as always – there is a junction of three main lines outside London Bridge Station and during the rush hour it is always congested. The train was full but because I live close to the beginning of the line I could always get a seat. The same one every day, by the window. Most days I read or listened to music, but that morning I was staring out of the window instead, watching the London suburbs go by. He was still there when I looked back but now he was leaning for- ward to follow me with his glasses, angling out as the train bore me on past and around a shallow bend. He was soon lost to sight. I knew I was blushing and I felt the palms of my hands sweating. I glanced around at the other passengers, feeling irrationally guilty, but they were commuters busy with their newspapers, magazines, smart phones, e-readers and books. I was unnoticed. I leaned back against the hard head-rest, closing my eyes, trying to calm myself. The man had been in one of the houses in a street where the terraces backed on to the track. Surely it was only a weird accident that he should seem to be looking at me? I could just about compre- hend why a certain kind of man would expose himself as a train went

168 christopher priest by, but why should he pick me out, stare so intently? The train continued its slow journey through the complex points and signals, halted briefly at London Bridge Station, then rattled on, eventually crossing the steel bridge above the Thames and into Char- ing Cross Station on the northern side. I left the train and went through the crowded concourse. Collecting a large cup of coffee I took the familiar walk to my office. I was shaken up by what I had seen but I needed to collect my wits for the day ahead. My first appointment was with the people who represent Yuri Maximov, an arms trader and holder of Siberian oil shale rights and our most important Russian client. I had been working on this presentation for two months. After that I had to see my line manager Kersey and report on the meeting. I always dreaded being in his office, because Kersey liked to mix business with pleasure. An ongoing problem, but I had it under control. Then a lunch with one of the agency heads. In the afternoon, more of the same. I put the incident of the naked man out of my mind. On the way home that evening the train trundled past the same row of houses, but my thoughts were running through the events of the day and I was catching up with incoming text messages. I forgot to look. That time.

The next day was Friday. I tried to act as if it was just another day. I gulped my organically sound breakfast, hurried to the station. The train arrived on time and I took my window seat. I nonchalantly read my copy of The Times, solved a few crossword clues. I listened to the BBC news on my mobile radio, then afterwards I sat back to watch the London suburbs go by. As the train slowed on the approach to London Bridge I was craning my neck to see ahead. It was a sunny day – I saw reflected light glinting from binocular lenses. He was already pointing them at the train, at my carriage, at my seat by the window. Again I felt the impact of that cold, unexplained regard, the sense that he had picked me out. But there was nothing he could do but look! So I stared back frankly,

unfinished business 169 feeling brazen, daring. At first it was just the same as the day before: the blatant, intrusive stare, the disguising blackness of the binoculars across his eyes. Then he slowly raised his free hand and waved. The train was moving more slowly than the day before. I thought, I will have to report this! I must try to remember details! As the train carried me on past I tried to see objectively, so if neces- sary I could give a clear description. He was of medium height, had a paunch. He was white-skinned. Bald, or his head was shaved. He had some kind of beard or moustache about his mouth, but because his arm threw a shadow it was difficult to see exactly. And he was hairy – his chest was matted and everywhere else I could see was smudged with hair. Soon the moving train dragged us away from each other. Again, the man leaned out to keep me in view for as long as possible. Other than his behaviour there was nothing about his appearance that was in any way unusual. There must be a million men in London like him: roughly middle-aged, bald or shaven, stocky of build. A mil- lion, but only one of them was doing what he did. And was doing it to me. I worked through the day and when I caught the train home in the evening I made sure I was sitting in a different carriage, further forward, a seat where I hoped to get a good view of the house. The train went along, accelerating away from the junction, and as it went past the houses I leaned forward to look. All the windows were dark, though, and because it was early evening the sky was bright behind the houses. There was nothing to see.

Kersey was coming to dinner over the weekend, with four other non- work friends to help keep him off me. It meant going to the supermar- ket and preparing and cooking, but I still had time to think. I had to be logical. Who was the binoculars man and why was he naked? The answer: I did not know. I did not want to know and most of all I did not care. Big cities are full of perverts and wackos and the discovery of one more was not my problem.

170 christopher priest But harder questions remained. Starting with this: why did I imagine he was looking at me? Couldn’t it just be chance? Maybe he stood at the window all day looking at women on trains. It had happened twice. Once might have been chance, but twice? Coincidence? No, not chance on two consecutive days. He was looking at me, and it was deliberate. So why me? Had he picked me at random? Perhaps he had spotted me on the same train, every day, always in the same seat, felt curious… No, that did not make sense either. When a train goes by you can barely see the people on board, let alone pick any one of them out, and never mind noticing them again and again. Trains in London are not reliable: they are often late, sometimes early, occasionally cancelled, and the operators change the rolling stock unpredictably. From the track-side it’s difficult to identify any individual train. So not random. Then had he chosen me for some reason? Had he followed me home? Was he a stalker? Again, no, not possible. How could he know where I lived? He was in an inner London suburb, while I lived in a middle-class dormitory town more than forty miles from the centre of the city. There was no way he could have found my house or located me in some other way, figured out which train I would be on, in which seat… No way in a sane or comprehensible universe. It left only one possibility. He was someone I knew, or had once known. Oh no. A thought to spoil a weekend. Not long after, Kersey arrived at the house with a bottle of champagne, a wet kiss and greedy hands, and the weekend went from spoiled to difficult.

I am a woman of what is sometimes called, out of courtesy, a certain age. I am in general well and contented. I look after my health, I work out once a week, I eat sensibly and walk as often as possible. I believe I have kept most of my youthful good looks, but there is no denying the calendar and I do not try. My name is Janine, a conventional name and my friends call me

unfinished business 171 Jan. I am an independent woman, a successful businesswoman, junior executive in a graphics imaging firm that specialises in conceptual drawings for large engineering or mining companies. I enjoy my work. I pay my bills and taxes, obey the law, vote in elections, have an African child I support through a charity, clean my house, care for my friends, and much more besides. I am in short an honest, decent, kind, hard- working citizen. Twenty years ago, though, things were different. Yes, different. The world was different. I was different. For a period of five or six years, from when I was about nineteen, I lived more or less entirely for the promiscuous pleasures of the flesh and the chemical distractions of the mind. I was young, single, living alone in London, free to do whatever I wanted and with whomever I wished. There were many places I could go, and many friends from which to choose. I observed no boundaries. Recklessly, I drank a great deal of alcohol, I experimented with many substances, I tried out a range of positions. I slept with an awful lot of men – I suspect I also slept with a lot of awful men. Now, today, do I regret that period? Do I look back on it as a kind of golden age? Do I miss that lifestyle and secretly yearn to go back to it? Was I damaged by it all? Would I recommend it to others? Yes, No, Yes, Maybe and No. Or then again: No, Maybe, No, Yes and Yes. Or yet again: well, you understand. The point is that I survived, that eventually I matured a little and cleaned up my life and found new friends and took a proper job and bought an apartment I love to live in. And became someone who pays her taxes, gives to charity, is kind to others… There is no denying that past, though. Once I had eliminated other options about the man, I began to wonder if I did after all know him, and what I knew of him and, worryingly, what I might have forgotten about him. All through that weekend, and while my guests sat around the dinner table, I thought back and back: old boyfriends, former lovers,

172 christopher priest brief encounters, all the emotional and sexual detritus left around by a paid-up member of the permissive society. When I thought about those men I remembered them, some with fond or happy or unhappy or indifferent memories. Others I recalled more vaguely, all feelings dimmed by time. I still remembered them, though. But I did not remember every man. Somewhere in the deeper recesses of the past there was a succession of befuddled or blanked out or forgotten one-night stands, casual pick-ups in pubs or nightclubs, chance encounters at raves or parties. There were likely to be some good memories there, but many more dark ones, some guilty, some irrelevant. Who was to know now? Everything was in the past, over and gone. I cast the forgotten to the night. I survived, I survived, I did no harm, I hurt no one, I survived. If I had ever been afraid that something or someone from this past would return to haunt me, that was long gone. I felt immunised by the passage of time. It was only later, after the dinner guests had left, that my thoughts returned to my naked phantom. What if there really was someone out there who held a grudge against me? For a moment, a memory flickered at the edge of my consciousness, the ghost of a face, something I had tried to bury. I realised my heart was racing, but before I could identify the source of my fear the image had vanished. Vanished too was Kersey, cast homeward into the night with the others, but only after a silent but determined struggle. Perhaps I should not have let his hand rest so long on my knee beneath the table, but my mind had been on other things.

The man was at the window again on Monday morning but I afforded him barely a glance. This time I wanted to identify the road in which the house was situated and I was clutching a detailed street map of London for that purpose. Before the train had rolled slowly around the bend I had positively identified the street: Ennert Road, LondonSE16 . The day after that, while the man watched me I ignored him and counted the houses. He was in the fifth along. Wednesday he was there again and I went on to work. The day

unfinished business 173 after that I called in sick but I went to the station and caught my usual train. Took the window seat. Waited, read for a while, then watched the London suburbs go by. He was at his window again. After a quick glance to be sure he was there I looked away. The train slowed down and entered London Bridge Station. No one lives in London Bridge – they just change trains there. On normal days I would sit tight as what felt like half the population of London climbed off my train and the other half piled back in, but that Thursday I joined the crowd who left the train. I walked down to street level and consulted my map.

Distances can be deceptive when you clatter by on a train – it turned out to be a long way back to Ennert Road. I had rarely walked through this part of London before. After the metropolitan bustle and noise around London Bridge, within a few streets I was passing through a less populous commercial area where former warehouses had been turned into office spaces. Beyond these was a warren of narrow residential streets, some lined with the sort of old terraced houses I had seen from the train, but in many places post-war apartment blocks rose on both sides. Cars were parked everywhere. Street signs were hard to see and even with the map I made a couple of wrong turns. I took a break at a café. There was a taxi driver at the next table, and using my street map he gave me exact directions to Ennert Road. Twenty minutes later I found it. Ennert Road was fairly long, but the part of the street running parallel to the rail tracks was a short section. As I arrived I heard trains going by noisily beyond the houses. I walked the length of that stretch to gain some sort of idea about the neighbourhood – many of the houses had racks of multiple bell pushes, indicating they had been partitioned into apartments. Most of them were in poor condition: the curtains looked shabby, the win- dows needed cleaning and the paintwork on the doors was dulled by exposure to the weather. The fifth house along was different. Without being conspicuously so, it was cleaner than the others, more recently attended to, the windows had ornaments and there

174 christopher priest were small potted plants on the sills. There was a single bell push by the door. I stepped back, counted the houses again to be sure. Then I pressed the bell. The door opened almost at once. The man who stood there was fully dressed, in baggy denim shorts and a T-shirt. He looked clean as if he had recently stepped out of a shower. He was wearing round spectacles that glittered in the daylight. For a moment I thought I was in the wrong place, but then I realised it must be him. He was staring steadily, appraisingly at me. I suppressed an impulse to stammer out an excuse, back off, run away to safety down the street. Then he said, in a level tone, “You took longer to find me than I expected. Come in, Jan.”

I followed him up a short flight of carpeted stairs. Behind him wafted the scent of bath oil or shower gel, but underlying that was something stronger, more animal, more of the body. For a couple of seconds, as I watched his sandalled feet climbing the steps in front of me, I was disoriented by the smell, taken back by an associative memory. I said nothing, but something deep stirred inside me: connection to him, identification of him, memory of him? I had prepared myself for any- thing when I called at the house, but these recollections took me by surprise. He led me into a room with a large, uncurtained window. Sunshine flooded in. Cushions were scattered across the floor, a stack of books lined one wall, rows of music and video discs another. The pages of a newspaper were spread across the carpet. The screen of an iPad glowed mutely from beside one of the cushions. I went to the window where there was a close view of the railway line. He stood somewhere close behind me as I glanced across the tracks. My heart was racing, my fists were clenched. There was a pair of binoculars on the sill. Then he said, “Do you remember me, Jan?” “I think so. I can’t remember your – ” “It’s Theo. I wasn’t using that name, back then.”

unfinished business 175 I turned to face him, and he was close to me. Too close. Again, the faint odour wafted across the space between us. Theo? Theo? “OK, Theo – what is it you want?” “You took my money. I want it back.” “Money?” I was astonished. This was about money? “Fifteen thousand pounds. You took it and I want it now. I’ll have it in cash, and you can have a week to bring it to me.” I wasn’t thinking about money. Associations with the man’s body smell were spreading around me, almost shocking in their unexpected clarity. I remembered a closed van in the dark of a freezing cold night, some stolen goods and money stuffed into a bag, an ancient stinking mattress laid across the compartment at the back. The vehicle was parked somewhere close to the side of a busy highway, a stream of traffic roaring by, the trucks shaking us with the violence of their close passage, brilliant beams of headlights shafting in, and this man, Theo, and me, lying on the dirty mattress, naked from the waist down, greedily going for it in that sordid dark, thinking of nothing but a carnal need for each other. It made me catch my breath to recall it. In spite of everything, I wanted it again.

“Money? What money?” I said again, dazed by the powerful physical sensations rising in me. “I took the rap, Jan. I served eight years for armed robbery, and you took the money to look after until I came out.” “I don’t remember,” I said weakly, but in the same moment I thought I probably might. “I need to sit down.” I sank down to one of the big cushions on the floor. He squatted on his haunches in front of me, trying, I think, to be threatening, but instead once again blurring my senses with the smell of him. He leaned towards me and I could see a resemblance to the young man I had briefly known. He had not been called Theo then – we agreed on that. He had had a headful of greasy hair, long and falling across his eyes, no moustache. He was lean, angry with the world, out for what he could get. What he actually got, he said now, jabbing a hand at me, was a

176 christopher priest long jail sentence. After release he went to find me, needing the stash of money. No one knew where I was so he went abroad – Sweden, Russia, then Thailand, Australia, back through India and eventually to Europe, always on the move and burning with the injustice of losing the money to me. Now he had found me somehow and he wanted the fifteen thousand pounds. Cash, he said. This week. “I can’t just find fifteen thousand pounds,” I said. “It was a lot then, but not any more. I want what is mine, what was mine all along. Fifteen grand is nothing to someone like you, a middle- class bitch with a job and a place out of London and fancy friends.” “Don’t call me that.” “You used to like being called a bitch. Jan the bitch.” “You don’t need money,” I said, glancing around at the stuff he had in his room, the general ambience of the house, which if not prosperous was certainly comfortable. “How do you afford this place?” “Mind your own business. Let’s say you’re not the only bitch who owes me.” I was trembling – with fear, but also with an irresistible impulse to have him. He terrified me, but he was reawakening familiar old urges. “Theo, don’t,” I said. “Jan, don’t,” he said, mocking me. “A good-looking woman like you always has a way of raising money.” “All right.” I believed I knew what he wanted, that the solution was swift and sure. Inexplicably, I wanted it too. Staring into his cold grey eyes, the light from outside glancing off the shiny dome of his shaved head, I stood up, undid my skirt, allowed it to slip down my legs. We did it then, roughly and noisily across the cushions, with the sunlight on us and the trains rattling past the open window, again and again, slowing down for the points. Afterwards, he pushed himself away and stood there over me as I sprawled on the floor, a close-up image of the man I saw at the window, his face and chest shiny with sweat, and even after what we had just done he remained threatening. It was not because of what he might

unfinished business 177 do, but for what I might want him to do. He kicked my clothes back to me across the carpet. “Good try, lady, but you don’t pay me off that way. You still owe me fifteen grand.”

It took me three hours to travel home after this. His last words as I left the house: “One week.” It had happened the night I was in the van with him. Theo, or whatever he called himself then, had made me drive him to an office building he knew, took a gun, pulled a balaclava over his face and ran inside. A minute later he ran out again, fired the gun in the air, swung into the passenger seat and yelled at me to get the hell out of there. I drove fast for half an hour, into the gathering night. Theo eventually decided we had got away with it so I parked the van on the side of the highway and we scrambled to the back where the filthy old mattress was. We celebrated. Later that night I drove him to the place he was staying, and took the money to the place I was staying. (Where were those places? Probably best forgotten.) I never saw Theo again, because a snatch squad of a dozen cops smashed down the door while he was still asleep and the law took its course. What happened to the stolen money? I know I held on to it, deter- mined never to spend it. I knew that the man was not one to mess with and I was frightened of him. But the months went by and turned into years. My life, as I said, started to change for the better. I made new friends, found places to live that weren’t either falling down or deep in filth, took on a few jobs, and in general detoxed myself. That period is almost as much a blur to me as the dark days preceding it, but at the end of it some matters were certain. I had a permanent place to live, I had a job, I was no longer living on the razor’s edge of my dangerous old life. And I had no idea what had happened to the stolen money. Somewhere along the line I had spent it, lost it, given it away – whatever, I no longer possessed it or the shabby old bag that it was contained in. I did not waste too much time worrying about it. The

178 christopher priest years slipped by and I heard nothing of Theo. Well, now it seemed he wanted his money back. As he and I more or less agreed, fifteen thousand pounds in the present day was not an impossible sum to find, or raise, or borrow, or even earn. I had savings accounts, a few shares, I had equity in my apartment, my credit rating meant a loan would be simple. I could even draw the money on credit cards. Somehow, though, I did not feel like doing any of those. Everything around me, my home, my possessions, my savings, all were symbols of the moderately successful woman I had become. I simply would not give any of it to Theo. It was not even his money. It was stolen, so it belonged to the people from whom he had stolen it – or, more likely, to the insurance company that would have covered the loss. The weekend came, then on the Monday morning I caught my usual train and went to work. The train duly passed Ennert Road and there was Theo, naked again at his window. He waved to me. Later that day I thought of our Russian client, Yuri Maximov.

Maximov is in the top fifty of the Forbes List, and is one of the three richest oligarchs in Russia. Part of his wealth is based on arms deals with despots in the Middle East, but most of it comes from an area of Siberian tundra several thousand square kilometres in size, where oil shale can be found not far beneath the permafrost. The dirt- ily obtained oil helps keep the Russian economy working, it creates atmospheric and groundwater pollution on a scale so horrific that it cannot be imagined let alone measured, and it keeps Yuri Maximov supplied with all the palaces, luxury yachts and private jets that he and his family seem to need. My own glimpse into the Maximov fortune was through a client deposit account his distant organisation kept open in our firm’s accounts. This was used for many unspecified transactions, nearly all of which involved numbered bank accounts. The interest alone on this client account came to more than twenty thousand pounds a week, credited in irregular, uneven amounts every

unfinished business 179 few weeks. As a trusted executive I had managed Maximov’s client account for several years. It had never occurred to me that I could steal any of it, but once the notion came to me it was irresistible. It was suddenly not a question of whether I should or should not, but more practical concerns: how to do it, how to conceal it, how to get away with it. That afternoon I made a deliberate error on Maximov’s account, and “accidentally” transferred a hundred dollars to one of his numbered accounts in the USA. I waited to see if the internal audit software would show up the anomaly, or if Kersey or anyone else on the network would notice, but by the time I went home there was not a stirring of awareness anywhere. The next morning at the office (as the train passed hiswindow Theo waved to me again and this time I waved back) the “error” was still unnoticed and definitely unchallenged. Without further ado I transferred fifteen thousand pounds to a small internet account of my own. I had the jitters for the rest of the day, but all was well. On the train home that evening I tried to spot Theo at his window, but he was not in sight. I waved towards him anyway, my fist clenched.

Because I failed to see how Theo could force me to pass the money over, I sat on it for a while. Even a small amount like fifteen thousand makes up an impressive pile of banknotes, and I liked having them around me. One evening I spread them over my floor and ran my fingers across them. The theft was unnoticed and I was fifteen thousand better off. Theo had no hold over me – he had only the vaguest idea where I lived. I soon discovered how wrong I was. He must have searched my purse for my address when I was at his house. One morning he was outside my apartment block as I left to go to work. He fell in beside me, matching my stride. “It’s thirty thousand you owe me now,” he said. “Theo – ” My heart was thumping in fright. “You said fifteen.” “That was then. This is now. Let’s call it a penalty for late delivery. Thirty grand, within a week.” “I was going to hand it over at the weekend!”

180 christopher priest He halted. I paused beside him. “You’ve got the fifteen?” “Well, yes.” “Where is it?” “Back there,” I said. “In my apartment.” We turned around. I made him wait outside the building while I went in to collect the cash. I had stuffed it into a large canvas bag, so I took this down and handed it over. “I want the rest in a week,” he said. “Another fifteen grand, in cash.” “Aren’t you going to count it?” “You’re not crazy enough to cheat me,” Theo said. “Just get the next fifteen. You’ve done it once, so you know how. Bring it to the house next week.” “Will that be the end of it?” I said, but he was already striding away. I called after him, “Is this the last time?” “Just do it.” He was gone, but I noticed he was not walking towards the station. I waited until he was out of sight, then hurried on my usual way. I caught the train with seconds to spare. Theo was of course not at his window when the train went by, but I could not resist looking.

Alone in my office I stared at the monitor, with Maximov’s account details up. I ran the usual checks but there was no sign anyone had spotted the theft. Kersey, indeed, had attached a routine note to the account, saying Maximov had once again renewed our contract. Another great slug of interest had been credited that morning. It made me think, the kind of thinking I found irresistible. I had the power to clean Maximov out, or at least the minuscule part of the financial empire represented by his client account. Inevitably I would be caught if I did that, but there was just a chance if I was swift and clever – But I did not want to be caught. Another fifteen thousand pounds was an unnoticeable drop in Maximov’s ocean.

unfinished business 181 I thought and thought. I set up the transfer, ready to go. I could do it – should I? Wasn’t theft in itself wrong, no matter how abhorrent the victim might be? Was this going to be Theo’s final demand? Did I have the guts to try again? Was I tempted beyond endurance? Yes, Yes, No, Maybe and Yes. Maybe, Yes, No, No and Yes. No, No, No, Yes and Yes. The Yes was at the end of the line. Every time. My index finger twitched on the mouse button. Continue Y/N? Kersey had entered my office without my hearing. He walked up behind me, reached forward and cupped a hand around my breast. I went tense and my finger clicked the mouse. The transfer went through. “Let’s celebrate this evening, Janine,” Kersey said.

182 christopher priest a Ethan Stone found himself dating a girl in Milwaukee, driving the seventy miles from Waupun each and every weekend to be with her. He’d never been successful with women, but something clicked with Cerys from the beginning. She kept talking about this thing called a ‘twin flame’ and looking into his eyes when she said it. It wasn’t a chore to drop into his Chevy each Friday when his shift ended, lug up onto the highway, drive south past the farms and the small towns, arrive at her place with the working week behind him, immerse himself in another life. Late on Sunday evenings he’d drive back through the same Wisconsin countryside, to his recognisable life, his little apartment above the pharmacy overlooking the correctional facility, to his job at the lawnmower factory, to the big machine that punched the holes into the sheet metal, and sometimes he felt, on bad days, into his very soul. He’d pull on his earphones and retreat into that severed world, spend his days thinking about Cerys. It wasn’t just the sex that saw him through those solitary hours. A lot of the time he liked to think about simply sharing a life with her, quiet meals in nice restaurants, going to the movies, taking her to Miller Park to watch the Brewers, things like that. He liked to think of a future. They had already started talking about one. There was just the business of having to deflect her questions about his income. He’d lied about that at the outset, dug himself a nasty hole. The hole got just a little bit deeper each time he saw her. He wondered if her talk about twin flames would dry up when he finally revealed the truth about what they paid a guy who engineered machine parts for sit-on lawnmowers, a guy who’d done that and nothing else for fifteen nondescript years.

dodge county 183 • A forest in Door County, following a hiker trail out beyond Bailey’s Harbor. She had a look in her eyes, something that told him tumultuous things were afoot. She kept breaking off mid-sentence and drifting into her own thoughts. They reached the bluff and looked out over the wide expanse of Lake Michigan. “Do you want children?” she asked at last. He hadn’t really thought about it. Not in any detail. “I don’t mean now,” she said. “I don’t mean with me. I’m speaking hypothetically…” “Sure. One day,” he said. “One day soon?” He shrugged. It didn’t ever pay to look too eager. He’d learned that much about women. “Men don’t have to worry about those things,” she said. Now would be a good time, he thought. To tell her the truth. To get it all out in the open. But he didn’t say anything. He reached out and took her hand instead. She had such delicate hands. She was delicate all over really, delicate like a dragonfly’s wings or a finely engineered set of bearings.

He was on Highway 49. It was October. The nights were drawing in. The sky was all brooding cloud and turbulence. He was heading to Cerys straight from the late shift, driving sleet hammering at the windshield. The guy was hunkered on the roadside, waving his arms a little, trying to get a lift from somebody, anybody. He had a sports bag slung over his shoulder and looked pretty desperate. Ethan Stone didn’t normally stop in situations like this. He was a cautious man by nature. But the weather was calamitous. The guy looked one step away from collapse. He thought about Cerys, thought about what she’d say if he told her he’d ignored a guy needing a break and left him at the roadside. She was a good person through and through. She really was. “I’m parked up in a back road over that way,” said the guy. He pointed towards the dark monolithic silos lurking beyond the Highway. “I ran out of gas. Stupid, I know. I need a lift to the nearest station.”

184 danny rhodes Ethan Stone had passed one in Brownsville not five minutes earlier. It was the least he could do. The guy looked like a deadbeat, someone who’d lived most of his life on the move. He sported the sort of dirty tan that spoke of rough living and he had a stale smell about him. The sports bag looked too new for the rest of him. The guy slung it on the back seat. It hit the leather upholstery with a heavy smack. “It’s good of you,” said the guy. “On a night like this.” Ethan Stone guessed it probably was, an act Cerys would be proud of, something for her to tell her friends about when they asked her what kind of man she’d been dating for these past two months. Something to counterbalance the truths he had yet to tell. He pulled into the garage. Its neon sign blinked in the rain. “Do you have a jerry can?” asked the guy. Ethan Stone nodded. “In the trunk,” he said. “May I?” “Go ahead,” said Ethan Stone. He watched the guy go to the back of the car and open the trunk, watched him fill the can at the pump, hunched over against the wind and rain, a man hardened by inclement weather. He seemed to know just how to stand to deflect all that was coming at him. As the man disappeared into the store, Ethan Stone glanced at the bag on the rear seat. He considered how pristine it looked, how its owner looked anything but pristine. He looked out of the rear window at the empty forecourt. There was no traffic on the road, just the driving sleet, the smothering cloud. What if I were to drive off now? he thought. Trade a jerry can for the contents of that sports bag? But Ethan Stone didn’t drive anywhere. He really wasn’t that type of person. He looked at his watch and calculated lost time with Cerys instead. And then the guy climbed into the passenger seat, where he shuffled and shifted his weight as Ethan Stone pulled the Chevy back onto the highway. “Damn chaffing,” he said.

dodge county 185 He pulled out a crisp twenty dollar bill. “For your trouble…and for the can,” he said. “I’ll take you to your car,” said Ethan Stone. “If you like. That way I get to keep the can.” The man looked out beyond the forecourt at the weather, at the sleet, at the windscreen wipers raking against the glass. For a second he looked mesmerised by it all. And then he spoke. “Okay,” he said. “That’d be great.” They sat in silence, the guy shifting in his seat, the petrol can secure between his feet, Ethan Stone fighting to see anything of the road in the rain. His wipers weren’t up to the job. A car passed them on the opposite carriageway. For a moment the headlights blinded him, and then they were gone. “Get off here,” said the man. “Towards Byron.” Everything was darker when they left the highway. They passed a sign that read randolph’s cheeses – get a wedge. Ethan Stone could see the lights of the silos off in the distance, tiny pinpricks in the inky blackness. The road was awash with water, great rivulets running off the tarmac and into the ditch. He thought about the guy walking such a distance in the driving sleet. In the corner of his eye was the sports bag. He started to wish he’d not pulled over, not met Cerys or brought any of this on himself. Danger signals came slanting at him like the sleet beyond the windscreen. They reached the stricken vehicle, pulled up facing it, front bumper to front bumper. Ethan Stone noticed the car had its wheels on the grass verge. It looked awkward sitting there as if it had wound up in that place against its will. He noticed something else too. The car looked like the sports bag, too pure to be possessed by a man like the guy sitting next to him. The driver’s window was down. Stone won- dered why a guy might leave a window open in the rain. He shifted in his seat much like the guy kept shifting. There was the bag, the car, the imagined sound of alarm bells. He looked up and down the road. There was nothing out there, nothing at all, just the dark of evening. His headlights couldn’t penetrate it. The sleet came in horizontal spears, oddly hypnotic.

186 danny rhodes The guy climbed out of the passenger seat. “I’ll fill her up,” he said. “If you give me a minute.” But he seemed to struggle to locate the fuel cap. He went to the trunk instead. Stone took another glance at the sports bag. He looked at that driver’s window again. He thought he could make out shards of broken glass in the seal. Or was it just the rain shimmering in the headlights? He could leave now. He understood that. He could take the sports bag or throw it out of the window. He could make a decision, take fate into his own hands. Or he could wait to see what might happen, as he often did with things.

“I like this place,” said Cerys. “But I often dream of something bigger.” They were in bed, bathing in the afterglow of lovemaking, the two of them staring up at the ceiling fan. Ethan Stone closed his eyes and listened to its rhythmic clicking. He’d never been one for dreaming about the future, but Cerys got him doing that, got him picturing a detached place somewhere in the suburbs, a driveway, a garage, a gar- den, a big front door. “If we sold your apartment and mine we could afford somewhere better,” she said. “Imagine it. Story Hill or Bay View. We could start out towards a dream.” Another lie he was going to have to admit to, telling her he owned his own place. Mentioning his debts would be the final thing but he couldn’t imagine doing that. He tried to visualise a scenario where that was a subject he’d never have to breach, his dark secret. But he couldn’t visualise a scenario like that. He could only envision revealing those things and losing Cerys forever. “It’s good to have dreams like that,” he said.

The sleet hammered at the windscreen and drummed on the roof of the Chevy. Ethan Stone sat with the engine labouring and tried to peer through the cascading water. He could not see the guy anywhere, just the open trunk. Time ticked onward, another minute or more, and still there was no sign. He opened his door and climbed out into the sleet.

dodge county 187 It stung his face. He pulled his collar up and put his head down, made his slippery way along the verge to the back of the stationary vehicle. The guy was there alright, bent at the waist behind the open trunk. The unopened jerry can was at his feet. The guy had his coat open and was counting a bundle of notes, flattening them out and gathering them together. And there was something in the trunk, something piti- ful. Ethan Stone spotted a protruding elbow, a swathe of pale skin, a delicate white wrist. The guy turned to face him. He looked genuinely put out. “Jesus,” he said. “All you had to do was stay in the car.” Ethan Stone saw the gun. He lifted his hands in front of his face. “I didn’t see anything,” he said. The guy shook his head and laughed. He looked beyond the two of them, out into the darkness. “I was going to let you be,” he said. “As a matter of courtesy.” He took a short handled shovel from the boot of the car, gestured towards the thicker darkness. “Get walking,” he said. Ethan Stone let himself be led away. Clods of mud stuck to his feet. The sleet bit into his skin. He thought about running but he couldn’t bring himself to do so, couldn’t overcome the fear of taking a bul- let in the back even though he was surely destined for a bullet in the brain. He walked for a minute, and another, far into the field, until the guy ordered him to stop. The guy threw the shovel to the ground. He instructed Ethan Stone to pick it up. “Dig,” said the guy. The shovel was military issue, designed for scraping a fox-hole in the field or burying a body in haste. Ethan Stone dug with one eye on the guy and the other on the gun. Somewhere far off, almost lost in the din of the sleet smacking against the soft mud and steel of the shovel, he thought he heard the whine of a siren. He looked up and across the agricultural land in the vague direction of the highway, picked out the looming, colossal shadow of a silo beyond it. “Dig faster,” said the guy.

188 danny rhodes Ethan Stone dug a hole in the shape of a man.

“That’s the sort I like,” said Cerys. “The one with the taps in the middle. We could share it, you at one end, me at the other.” Ethan Stone gathered himself. Here he was in a hardware store talk- ing about purchasing bathroom furniture for a future house in the suburbs he had no chance of ever owning. There was a coffee shop in the corner of the store. He thought about leading Cerys over that way, sitting her down, buying her a blueberry muffin, telling her the truth about a few things. But instead he only felt himself nodding. “I like the taps,” he said. “The chrome looks classy.” “I’m not sure,” said Cerys. “You don’t prefer brass?” “I like the brass ones too,” he said.

“That’s enough,” said the guy. The sleet pounded into Ethan Stone’s forehead as he trudged back across the field in the direction of the open trunk. He thought about running again, looked down at his mud caked feet, realised he wouldn’t make it more than three steps, wondered how it might feel to take his final breath in a saturated field just East of Brownsville, Wisconsin, staring up at a night sky devoid of stars. They reached the car. They reached the body. “Take that end,” said the guy. He ushered Ethan Stone in the direction of the feet. They were ice cold. They didn’t feel like part of a human being at all. And yet they were. He considered who the girl might be. A girlfriend? A family member? A random victim who made the mistake of pulling over to offer a guy a helping hand on a storm lashed highway? In his mind, Ethan Stone pictured the moments to come, the two of them lugging the girl’s body across the field of cloddy mud, lay- ing it down, rolling it into the grave he had just dug for the purpose, the guy ordering Ethan Stone to enter the grave and kneel astride the girl, the gun at his temple, the cold metal, Ethan Stone making one last desperate plea for mercy. He imagined his own pathetic corpse lying on top of the girl in the makeshift grave, imagined Cerys reading

dodge county 189 about his murder in the paper. It occurred to Ethan Stone that his last chance was already upon him, that if he waited any longer it would be too late, that he’d finally reached a moment that could not be solved by procrastination, as he always knew he would. And yet here he was, waiting, waiting to see what might happen next, living his life without really living it, existing without truly existing at all. As he felt himself helping a killer heave the lifeless weight of a dead girl from the trunk of a car and across a field to a mud soaked grave, as he became an unwitting accomplice to murder, Ethan Stone tried to calculate the correct moment to act. It wasn’t about calculating risk. He was simply fighting to overcome a lifetime of inaction, years of waiting to see where the chips might fall. Even Cerys had come to him by accident, the result of a joke advertisement placed by his fellow workers. When he’d received that first phone call, he’d hardly known what to do with himself. He’d gone along with her suggestion of meeting up because he hadn’t known how to do anything else. Now he closed his eyes and waited for fate to lay the cards down once again, for something to happen that would take the decision away from him. But nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. And nothing happened beyond those moments, except the body grew heavier and Ethan Stone’s legs grew wearier and the little red light on the dark silo beyond the fields blinked an effortless and repetitive heartbeat into the great wide universe. Time ticked on another moment. And another. When they reached the edge of the grave Ethan Stone issued a cry of anguish, summoning a part of himself he wasn’t certain could be summoned. As he did so he propelled his frame forwards, using the weight of the dead girl to overbalance his tormentor. A shot went off, then another. Stone waited for the pain to kick in but no pain came. They fell into the grave, the girl half on top of the guy, Stone on top of the girl. In the confusion that followed, the confusion that was all limbs and splaying arms and guttural grunts, Ethan Stone saw the gun pointing at him. He flung himself sideways, felt the bullet split the air an inch from his right ear. But perhaps that wasn’t possible, perhaps

190 danny rhodes he only imagined such a thing. Perhaps he was imagining the macabre dance he was now part of, this wildly choreographed fight scene, the slipping, sliding, shifting weight, the farcical grabbing and grunting, perhaps none of this was truly happening. Or perhaps it was. Ethan Stone lurched for the gun. He twisted it away, forcing the barrel into the sodden earth. The thing kicked back at him and a splatter of mud shot up into his face so that he was forced to wrestle blind with a killer in the rain lashed murk of a field in Dodge County, wrestle for a chance to put thirty three years of inaction behind him, wrestle for a future with Cerys. And then Ethan Stone realised the gun was in his hands, that the barrel was pointing at the guy’s face, that the guy had his hands up in a desperate bid to deflect what was coming. For a second, the very fabric of time seemed to stiffen. Ethan Stone felt an odd sensation. Somehow he was pulling the trigger by his own volition and the bullet was pass- ing through the guy’s palm and the guy was quivering in a shallow, puddle filled grave and then there was nothing at all except for the sleet and the squelching mud and the realisation in his head that he had just killed a guy who murdered people on lonely roads, a guy who carried a sports bag that was too new for the rest of him.

His favourite thing was eating homemade French toast in bed with Cerys. Her coffee was good too, fresh and real. He’d come to buying the same brand but he couldn’t get it to taste the way Cerys got it to taste and wasn’t that the case for just about everything he’d shared with her? TV comedies were funnier. The rain was more refreshing. Nights were preludes to days of opportunity. He thought perhaps he loved her and only contemplated losing her when he thought of the lies he’d told. But each time he tried to come clean she gave him a fawning eye that suggested she looked to him in some way, and he lost his nerve. He couldn’t help himself. He was surely heading for a fall of the greatest magnitude. But he couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. •

dodge county 191 Ethan Stone clambered to his feet, plastered from head to toe in mud and blood. He stood for a moment, looking down at two dead bodies sprawled in a sludge swilled grave. He heard the scream of another siren on the highway and wondered if there had been an accident up there. He imagined the scene on a night like this, the sleet coming down, a windscreen smashed to smithereens, blue and red light reflecting off a million tiny shards, the choking smell of burning rubber, blood and oil running into the gutter. The night was full of those things. Something clicked in his head. He clambered out of the grave and slogged his way back across the field to his car. He opened the rear door and dropped into the seat. He picked up the sports bag and opened it, knowing what he was going to find before he discovered it. Then he closed the bag and walked back to the grave. He used the shovel to refill the hole, slopping saturated earth over limbs and torsos, thinking of Cerys and the lies he’d told her, taking control of a situation in a way he’d never done before. He tried to think like a criminal, to act like a man who carried a gun, a trench shovel and a sports bag full of cash on lonely Wisconsin roads, a man who lived by reacting to what was coming at him. When the job was done he took the shovel to the trunk of the car where the body had been and used the jerry can to douse the vehicle in petrol. He triggered his lighter and touched the flame to the back seat. He was still making choices when he pulled away from the burning vehicle, thinking about the sports bag full of money and what he was going to do with it, thinking about Cerys and her plans and thinking about the honest guy he’d always been, a guy who worked his job and earned his pay, a guy who’d told three lies to the first woman who’d ever shared ideas of a future with him. There was ninety thousand dollars in the sports bag. Enough to make a start. Enough to fabricate a redundancy pay off and equity release on a city flat, enough to clear his debts and start afresh. Just enough. In his rear view mirror Ethan Stone watched the flames licking at the abandoned vehicle, imagining the infernal fires of hell licking at his flesh for all eternity. The rain abated as he pulled back onto the highway. He drove for less

192 danny rhodes than a mile before a police car sped by on the opposite carriageway, lights blazing, siren wailing. A couple of minutes later a fire engine followed it. He watched the traffic ahead, the blinking taillights, lifted his foot off the accelerator. He glanced across at the sports bag. Would there really be retribution for what he’d done? He could go to the police, explain about the guy with the sports bag, the gun, the body in the trunk, the grave. He could explain all of that but then there was the rest. Ethan Stone could already imagine the questions firing at him. Why did you bury the bodies? Why did you burn the vehicle? Why did you take the bag full of money? And there was the other thing. He’d killed a man. He had to be clear about that in himself. Curiously he felt nothing beyond a numb realisation. He turned onto Highway 41 and headed south, driving through Allenton and Cedar Lake, on towards Menomonee Falls and the out- skirts of Milwaukee. He pulled onto the exit ramp and turned south on 100, towards Grantosa and Cerys, wrestling with the urge to jump onto West Lisbon, head to the police station, hand himself in and take his chances. He thought about calling Cerys but they had an arrangement. If it got too late he’d let himself into her flat and slip into bed. It was a nice arrangement, the sort of thing couples did. He glanced down at the sports bag again, passed a Burger King and felt a hollowness in his belly. Only it wasn’t hunger. It wasn’t anything he’d experienced before. There were no lights on. The dashboard clock signalled one am. Late then. Ethan Stone let the car labour in the shadows, imagining Cerys squirrelled beneath the covers, imagined her soft skin, the scent of her. Could he slip into her life again now, take a shower, put the events of the evening behind him, act like none of it had actually happened? Could he drip feed the ninety thousand dollars into a new life with Cerys without sending any ripples out into the world? Could he do all of these things and still be the man she’d fallen for, Ethan Stone, quiet, stolid, a man who did not participate in surprises? And could he live the life of a fugitive? Could he put that burden on her? Sitting in the driver’s seat of his Chevy, looking across at the dark house where

dodge county 193 Cerys was sleeping, he imagined living that life, not knowing what might be around the next corner, who might be one step behind him, what dangers he might unleash on the two of them. He knew he couldn’t. Ethan Stone pulled away from one possible future and swung the Chevy South towards West Lisbon, thinking now about setting the sports bag on the counter in front of the desk clerk, staring the guy in the eye, telling his story. When he reached the police station he turned into an empty gas station opposite, sat there with the engine labouring, plucking up the courage to act. Rain was falling again. The black tarmac glistened under the glow of streetlights. The traffic signal changed six times, from red to green and back again. Two policemen emerged from the building. They were carrying take out coffee. They shared a joke and climbed into a patrol car. Ethan Stone watched them sipping at their coffee, men hardened by a life of tough decisions. He imagined Cerys with a man like that. He imagined wandering over to the patrol car caked in mud and blood. He pulled away, feeling their eyes on him, as he passed them, a hollow sensation emanating from the pit of his stomach. He drove back up Lisbon, not knowing where to go, resolved to taking the money because he didn’t have the nerve not to take it, burying the events of the evening somehow, as he’d buried the two bodies, the poor unfortunate girl and the guy with the sports bag who’d killed her for her car and then discovered she was out of gas. Or something like that. Something terrible and tragic like that. He was burying the life that had happened to him, he knew that much, replacing inaction with a life in which he made things happen. As he drove back up Lisbon towards Grantosa the first thin threads of dawn appeared. He thought of Cerys and started to concoct a story about the highway being closed due to an accident. He turned on the radio, listening for any news like that, something to explain the sirens. But they were talking about a killing at a gas station in Brownsville. A night attendant had been shot. The police were looking for two men in a dark coloured Chevy. One was an escaped convict from Waupun. He

194 danny rhodes pictured the scene from the window of his apartment; the twenty foot mesh steel fencing that separated the men of the correctional facil- ity from him. He could see them in the exercise yard, their grey-blue jumpsuits, their shuffling gaits. Sometimes he’d watched them for long spells, considering his life against theirs, blocking out the creeping reality of another lonely evening, of another stretch at the lawnmower factory, a life with little to say for itself. Then Cerys had called. Ethan Stone looked down at the bloody stain on his shirt, at his mud caked hands. In the rear view mirror he could see the flashing lights of the patrol car heading in his direction. He pictured the two policemen picking up their shift to be confronted by a dark coloured Chevy and a driver caked in blood. He concentrated on the road, glanced down at the sports bag on the passenger seat. He imagined Cerys turning over in bed as sunlight penetrated the blinds, imagined her staring at the stack of dollar bills on the kitchen table, finding the note that asked only for her forgiveness. He looked into his rear view mirror again. The patrol car was moving at speed now, racing up Lisbon behind him. On any other day he’d have slowed down a touch, pulled to one side to give it plenty of room, pondered where it was heading, watched it disappear into a world he had never been a part of. But tonight he was part of that world. He’d always be part of that world. On the passenger seat beneath the sports bag, was the revolver. What he wanted to do, he supposed, was drive, live off the remaining cash until it was okay to return to Cerys, simply turn up on her door- step someday, have her fall into his arms. But maybe it was better to stop right here, right now, let them take him in, tell them his story. Or he could make a stand, go down all guns blazing. He could do that if he wished. All of these things were open to him. Ethan Stone glanced one more time at his rear view mirror. The patrol car was still hurtling up the road, the sky a bloody smear. He sucked a lungful of air deep inside himself.

dodge county 195 a A motorway runs through my brain tonight. Loud traffic – thought traffic – crams every lane, bumper to bumper, refusing me any hope of sleep. I get up and walk the darkness. I should switch on a light, I know; four nights isn’t long enough to get accustomed to all of the tics and tricks of a new place. But Heather is still asleep somewhere behind me, and the room at the end of the landing, softly breathing, means Max is alive too – Asleep. I mean asleep. And this was supposed to be a fresh start. Beige walls, neutral colours; safe. In the kitchen I open the fridge and most of what’s inside I do not like. Mature cheese. Breaded ham. Eggs. I haven’t eaten an egg in fif- teen years, but Heather insists on keeping us well stocked, and when- ever I ask why she inevitably answers with a question, because every- thing with that woman has to be a question, and what fridge, she will ask, doesn’t have eggs in it? But no one eats eggs in our house. No one. I don’t, Heather doesn’t, and Max is four years old; he would rather paint monster faces on the shells and throw them at the walls. Why is it always the same monster? I never ask because I know he’ll tell: it is the monster who stole my brother. And sometimes I wonder if Heather is seeing someone else, a man who likes to down eggs raw after com- pleting one of their exhaustive and exhausting sessions. But Heather can stomach that sort of thing even less than I can stomach eggs. She isn’t cheating. She’d need to open up more than just her legs for that. Besides, a dozen eggs tell me she isn’t. Like twelve bald-headed

196 steven j. dines jurors mired in deliberation, they’ll sit untouched on the shelf-racks until the fridge begins to smell like halitosis, and that is how I know everything is fine; that is how I gauge the status of my marriage; how I know with any degree of certainty that things have not gotten any worse. The jury is out. Forever out. And in the darkness I find a seat in which to dig in and wait for morning.

It takes another four days for Max to feel hungry at breakfast time. It is a relief to see his appetite return, however, and he makes short work of the bacon rashers on his plate. I cannot touch mine. It sounds like he is crunching on bone. So I eat just my toast then push the plate to the middle of the table and point out to Heather that she cremated the bacon again. Death by a thousand cuts, divorce by a thousand digs, I realise that, but I cannot help myself. If we can’t control the little things, like timings, then what hope is there of finding him on this, the sixty-seventh day? And it is raining out. He doesn’t have his jacket on. I put it on the hanger the morning I unpacked his things myself. Heather didn’t see the point; Max neither. Pretending only underlines it isn’t real, she said, and left me to it – the boxes, the clothes, the toys, the anguish: everything. “Put his stuff in the loft until he’s found.” It is her way of dealing with this thing, a defence mechanism, like a shopkeeper nailing boards over glass in an attempt to keep the looters out. What she doesn’t get is this: nothing will keep them out; not if they want to get in. Besides, the loft is a no go zone. We can use it, according to the rental agent when asked if we might utilise it for storage, but no one knows what is up there. Apparently, the owners bought the property as an investment and put it straight onto the rental market. They didn’t inspect the loft space. Nor did the agency. Is it floored, do you know? I asked. She said she didn’t. Which sounded a little incompetent to

the space that runs away with you 197 me at the time, but now I’ve thought about it, now that we’ve had that space, empty or not, floored or not, sitting above our heads for over a week now, I’m beginning to think it is actually pretty cool. Like a lottery ticket no one has bothered to check or an unopened box on Deal or No Deal. I doubt there is any money up there, certainly no treasure – the house is a recent build, not much older than the twins themselves – but then again there could be. Besides, what is up there remains untouched. Untouched. I like that. “They’re going to find him,” I announce. Him, or the one who took him. Which goes in the face of everything that we, the police and our- selves, have accomplished so far. The search of our house, our street, our neighbourhood, our city, and all of the surrounding countryside has turned up nothing. It feels like we may be chasing a phantom. Or maybe Jesus Christ. “I know they will find him,” I tell my wife. “We just need to have some faith.” Heather stops pushing her watermelon chunks around the bowl as Max snaps a rasher of bacon between his fingers, and both of them look at me across the table. “Do you think so?” Max asks. He looks down at his plate, a frown worrying his face. “Do you think he…remembers us?” I reach across and ruffle his hair. “Only every time he looks in the mirror, son.” “What if he doesn’t have a mirror?” he asks. “What if there aren’t any where he is?” “And where is that?” Heather grimaces at me. Don’t. Another ruffle. This one feels mechanic. Like I am touching his mother. “Where is he, Max?” “I don’t know… Heaven?” “Your brother isn’t in heaven.” “Rob.” “He is missing, Max, not…not lost. He could be anywhere. Five minutes away or, or…”

198 steven j. dines “Five hundred,” he suggests. “Yes, or that,” I say. “No one knows but him and the man who took him. The police will bring him back though. We need to believe that. All of us.” I look at Heather; she looks away. The watermelon pieces in the bowl look like chunks of flesh to me. I’ve lost my appetite. “I’ll give them a call today.” “Dad?” “Yes,” I say, slowly turning from his mother to look at him again. “What is it?” “When do you think they will find him?” “I’d only be guessing, Max. I’m sorry.” Do you think he remembers us? An innocent question but a terrible black bean I must not let become a terrible black beanstalk. Children forget far easier than parents – Stop. Think about something else. His jacket. Hanging in the wardrobe like some butterfly chrysalis. But it’s raining out. It is raining hard out. When I drew it out of the suitcase, I found a single blond-brown hair stuck to the collar. Over two months old. I take a deep breath. “Don’t worry,” I say to Max – and to Heather through him. “He will remember us.” I take a deep, deep breath. The jacket lining had remembered him, too. “So, Max, what do you think of the house?” I ask, hastily changing the subject. He shrugs. “It’s okay, I s’ppose.” “And you?” Heather. She looks at me with a start, as if she has just wandered back into the room. Where does she go? I wonder. And why does she never invite me? “It’s fine,” she says, nodding. “Different and…smaller, obviously.” Our four bedroom detached sold quickly once we dropped the ask- ing price to fifty grand below the market value.

the space that runs away with you 199 “The money will help with the costs,” I assure her. Max doesn’t know about the two private investigators we’ve hired to help with the search. Moving to this rented three bedroom on the other side of the city was supposed to be a distraction for him too. “I’d move into a caravan if I believed it’d make any difference,” Heather says. “I know that,” I reply, arranging my facial muscles into a smile. “We’re going to find him.” Untouched. “You keep saying that,” she says. “You keep saying that but…” “What?” “I can’t, Max is here.” “It’s okay, Mum,” he says. And then, turning to me, he continues on her behalf. “Dad, what she wants to say is she thinks Michael isn’t coming home. She thinks Michael is killed.” Hearing his name acid-burns the back of my throat, even though I am not the one who said it out loud. I cannot speak. Likewise, Heather cannot seem to find her voice either. Instead, she nods her head and looks at me, her eyes glass, wet with the tears of the rain.

After breakfast, I decide I don’t feel like working with zombies today. I have a commission for an undead design from an American skate- board company and a similarly themed cover proposal to complete for an indie book publisher. But following the conversation at breakfast, I don’t really care to see Michael’s face appear on any of my zombie fodder. Jesus, no. So, I get up from the dinner table. It is also my workstation – I don’t have a proper drawing table because it isn’t my proper job, as Heather is keen to remind me; my proper job is working part time at The Last Bookshop. And why does everything feel so apocalyptic today? Maybe they’re going to find him, I think. Maybe today is the day. In which case, this won’t do. Zombies or the last anything – it won’t do at all. “Max?” He is in the next room watching a film, but there is a moment when

200 steven j. dines I feel the veins in my throat tighten as I think he is not going to answer. I have a lot of moments like this, usually until he is standing right in front of me, an inquiring look floating up from his innocent face as I arm the dust out of my eyes. “Max, let’s do something. What do you say?” “But I’m watching Toy Story.” “You can stop it and watch it later. Daddy doesn’t feel like drawing today. We should do something.” Max listens longingly to Woody and Buzz having a heated argument. Finally, he turns to me. “We could look in the loft?” “We could,” I say. “We could do that, but wouldn’t it…spoil things?” “How?” he asks. I cannot tell him I don’t want to know what’s up there. That I would rather live with possibility and with hope. “Well,” I say, thinking fast. “Remember how I told you nobody’s been up there since they built the house?” He nods, attentive while the toys come to blows underneath a truck. “We’ve joked about what might be up there too, haven’t we?” Another nod. “That was fun.” “Exactly. And we don’t want to spoil that.” Suddenly, I am inspired. “It’s like the toys in the film, Max. They run and hide when anyone is around. They only come out when you don’t look.” “It spoils the magic,” he says. “Yes,” I say. “It spoils the magic. Good, son.” “Can we play Duplo instead?” he asks. “Of course we can.” “And build a tower?” “We can build the biggest tower.” “And watch Toy Story?” “Of course.” “And can we talk about what’s in the loft?” I hesitate. It isn’t uncertainty. What I feel is excitement. “Yes, Max, we can certainly do that.” And so, we do. •

the space that runs away with you 201 Aliens…left behind on our planet like ET. Or spacemen, like Armstrong and his crew, who some say never even landed on the moon. Maybe they didn’t and ended up in our loft instead. What do you think? What, cowboys? Yeah, why not? Gunfight at the OK Corral. Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers. What else might be up there? Yes, well, obviously there are dinosaurs in our loft, Max. How do I know? Because it’s like Jurassic Park up there at night when you’re asleep… It isn’t a lie but a gift, much like the gift of Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Except it is long after midnight and Max is asleep and I cannot hear gunshots or booster rockets or the scrape of a single claw across the ceiling. The house is quiet, and the space over our heads seems to stretch and contract, stretch and contract – breathing, almost, with a life of its own. “Heather?” I ask the gloom. “Heather? Are you awake?” Nose to the wall, she doesn’t stir beside me. Even if she is awake, she won’t stir. She avoids this insomniac’s middle-of-the-night conversa- tions whenever she can. The witching hour is when our missing son haunts me the most; when the membrane between the present and the past and Here and There is at its thinnest; when memories flow with ease into words and hope crams the spaces between. Heather cannot cope with memories. Heather cannot cope with hope. Suddenly I am out of bed and walking through the darkness toward the landing at the top of the stairs. Old before its time, the house ticks and creaks all around me. Max’s door is open. The glow from his night light projects diluted green stars onto the walls outside. Most of them appear elongated and distorted, like a bunch of odd accidental spills. But the star on the loft hatch looks perfectly formed to me. What about monsters, Dad? Part two of our conversation earlier. I don’t believe there are any monsters in the loft, son. Why not? Because I don’t think there should be. It’s not that kind of space. Sitting on the landing floor, the hard balustrades at my back feel like the massive, knuckled fingers of some giant’s hand. And I am in

202 steven j. dines his palm. Between the balustrades – or his giant fingers – cool night air reaches up from downstairs to gooseflesh my back. I have left a window open in the kitchen. Heather would be mad. I always leave a window open. She sees burglars and thieves; I see Michael, having found his way home after three long months. Heather sleeps in the same room as me, but lives in a whole other world. She sleeps in a room. Tonight, I sleep under the stars.

The morning drive into work is a long spiral of one-way streets and intensifying traffic under a bloodshot winter sky. Faces – long, slack, empty – peer back at me from rear view mirrors, Munchian characters riding the Helter Skelter, at the bottom end of which is an eight or nine hour long shift. Fortunately for me, mine is four hours and I found an email in my inbox this morning that changes everything. Behind the counter in The Last Bookshop, Emily’s is the first kind face I see. The upper half, anyway; she is shielded behind a novel called Dark Matter. She’s a fan of ghost stories. She understands that people are energy: they don’t die; they just take on different forms. “I got it,” I announce to the shop, drawing a curious glance from a browser over in the Health & Well-Being section. “Emily, I got it.” I’m going to be the lead illustrator for a major US-based role-playing games company. “Covers, interiors, everything. Oh, and if this new RPG system takes off, I’ll be working on the scenario modules too.” “That’s wonderful news, Rob,” she says. “Congratulations.” She puts down her book without even marking the page and runs out from behind the counter to hug me. I let her. She’s warm – inside and out. If she wasn’t nineteen and I wasn’t approaching twice that age, I would reconsider my life. But my love for Heather hasn’t died yet; it’s just taken on a different form. And my arms never leave my side. “Thanks,” I say, smiling, and blushing like a fool. “But don’t think you’ll be getting rid of me just yet. The initial contract is only for six months.” “But it’s doing something you love, Rob.” She steps out of the hug, and the space between us is immediately filled by the warmth of her smile. “You don’t get the opportunity to chase after your dreams very

the space that runs away with you 203 often in life. Congratulations, man. And hey, lunch is on me today, all right?” It is more than all right. It is twenty-eight minutes of the first real cheerfulness I have felt since Michael went missing. He doesn’t enter the conversation or my thoughts during this time: Emily and I talk about me getting the job and where I’d like to take this thing if I could take it anywhere; we talk about books and stories, particularly ghost stories since it is Emily’s specialist subject, which doesn’t make me think of him because from where I am sitting the world is good and boys do not die, boys go missing then return safe and well and whole. Twenty-eight minutes. Then my mobile phone rings.

Michael isn’t dead. My mind clings to these three words as I speed home, having made some poor excuse to Emily about Max being ill. But Max isn’t ill, he is… What is he doing? I think, trying to decipher Heather’s message on the phone. Not a message, an actual live conversation, but she’d deliv- ered it like a message – a cold, distracted reading. I can imagine her calling me from the house under different circumstances. The house is on fire, Rob. The house is on fire and maybe you should come home. This, as she stands in the living room and lets tongues of fire wrap themselves around her. “Get hysterical,” I say, demonstrating my point by thumping the steering wheel again and again with the side of my fist. “Give mesome - thing, woman.” But the house isn’t on fire, I remind myself. It is just Max acting up. Getting the wrong idea. It’s me, she’d said on the phone. You need to get back here and let your son see what’s in the loft. Forget the part about your son. She disowns the poor kid every time she loses control. The crucial and most worrying part of the message is see what’s in the loft. At the house, I leave the car running and rush inside. Heather is on

204 steven j. dines the two-seater settee, curled up so that she will fit, nursing a headache with one hand and pointing toward the stairs with the other. The television is off and there is a half-empty bottle of white wine on the floor nearby. No glass. “I don’t know what kind of ideas you’ve been putting in your son’s head, but he thinks Michael is up there.” As I move to the bottom of the stairs, she spreads her fingers – stop. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Rob.” “I’ll talk to him.” “Where’d he get the idea?” “The other day when we spoke about…” “What?” she snaps. “What we’d like there to be in the loft. Michael’s name wasn’t men- tioned, though.” She turns her head to look at me, daggers blunted by alcohol. “Why not?” she asks. Which ambushes me. “What?” “Why wasn’t his name mentioned? Why didn’t you want to find him up there?” “What is this? What are you saying?” “…Nothing.” “You don’t honestly think I don’t want him to be found…” “I said ‘nothing,’ Rob. Stop being paranoid and go fix your son.” “He isn’t broken,” I tell her. “And when did you start drinking from the bottle?” “It saves time,” she says. “When did you start paying such close attention?” I will not go there. I will not go there. I will not go there. Two boys were in the garden, and then there was one. “Did you go up there?” I ask, looking at the dark reflection of her in the television screen. “Into the loft.” She makes me wait, as if somehow she knows the importance of her answer. Or maybe she begrudges me the gift of more words today. “No,” she says finally. “I didn’t go up. Michael is dead, and there is

the space that runs away with you 205 nothing up there that will change that.” I want to say, How can you be so sure that’s true? Anything is possible. Anything. Because when you have a space to fill, you can fill it with whatever you want. And Max wants his twin brother. “I’ll talk to him,” I say again, and head upstairs. I find Max on the landing, sitting below the loft hatch with his legs tucked underneath him. He has a small mountain of loose Duplo Lego bricks on the carpet beside him and he appears to be building some kind of stepped tower. “What are you doing?” I ask, taking a knee. I know the answer, but I want to hear him say it. Maybe I also want it to be true. “I’m going up there,” he says, “to get Michael.” There aren’t nearly enough bricks for what he has in mind, but he’s four and doesn’t plan ahead. He has Ideas, capital I, and acts right away to realise them: Michael is up there; he will go get him; everything will be okay. A–B–C. I should have seen this coming. He wanted to look up in the loft, and I told him it would spoil the magic. But there is no magic that can keep him from trying to reach his brother, not when that particular Idea has taken hold. “Max, listen to me,” I say, trying to sound firm, but wondering, wondering, “you can’t go up there. You’re going to hurt yourself if you try to climb. I need you to stop… Please.” Need you to, not want you to, I think. He creases his brow and gives a dramatic shake of his head. “You said.” “I said what?” “You said there wasn’t any monsters. You said that.” “Yes, I did, Max, and it’s true.” I take his small hands in mine. “Up there is a good place. I meant that. But we don’t know that’s where Michael is.” Now, he puts all of his theatricality into one seemingly never-ending nod. “That’s why we need to look, Daddy. Before it’s too late. We need to look.” “No, Max, I don’t think I was clear enough. We won’t find him up

206 steven j. dines there. Michael isn’t in the loft. Do you understand?” Right before my eyes, something inside him crumbles, and he pushes the Lego tower before he runs, crying, into his bedroom. The tower sways, topples, hits the wall, and breaks into a dozen smaller pieces that crash to the floor. I feel like a terrorist. Like I have destroyed something sacred and holy – not just a tower of plastic but the Idea that built it. Max’s Idea. And if I am truthful, my Idea, too. That Michael is still alive.

It is the day of Michael’s disappearance. I am drawing at the dinner table. The front door stands open and each blade of grass on the front lawn stands out in high definition. The boys are playing outside, and one of them flits across the doorway every so often as they run around in their bare feet. I can’t always tell if it is Max or Michael, but most of the time it is easy: Michael’s hair has a cowlick and is a lighter shade of brown. I leave them for just a moment, to fetch a box of fresh drawing supplies from the loft, and when I return, they both stroll out of the kitchen carrying tall glasses of Robinsons orange and pineapple. Like his hair, Michael’s juice is a lighter shade; Max likes his strong. I keep telling him his teeth will pay the price one day. He keeps telling me the Tooth Fairy will make him rich. “How’s the war going out there?” I ask. “Anyone winning?” Michael sips his juice. He is panting, thirsty. “Max lost half his army.” “Oh, why?” “He can’t find them.” Of course – green soldiers, green grass: they keep going AWOL out there. “Well, you better look for them,” I say. “Because next time I mow the lawn it’s going to get pretty messy out there.” “Ew,” they say together, thrilled. “Daaaad.” Fade to black. “DAD!” Max is standing in front of me. His lips continue to move but I can- not hear a word. It is like someone somewhere pressed a mute button.

the space that runs away with you 207 It isn’t just Max; the whole world has stopped talking. Outside, all of the light has gone out of the day. Did I fall asleep? I don’t think so. I walk down the hall to the front door and look up – This is a dream. The sky is hanging beams, roof joists, boards. Stars. No, not stars: knotholes. Through these knotholes, the sun burns holes in the lawn. Tendrils of grey smoke rise from the grass and the smell of burning plastic fills the air. Are those tiny screams? Something taps me on the lower back. The screams are growing louder on the lawn. I turn around and it is Michael standing there in the hall, not Max; Max is gone. Max is not in the garden. Then I awake on damp sheets and realise the screams are mine and my mouth is full of them, toy soldiers, melting plastic. But this is a dream too. When I finally wake up, it is to a house holding its breath. I stumble through the dark and along the landing into Max’s room, where I find him in bed, Max not Michael, stirring in his sleep. His hair sticks to his skin and his head twitches on the pillow. I want to reach down and save him from his nightmare, but I cannot do it. The best I can do is run my fingers through his sticky hair and raise my eyes to the ceiling. To the loft. He needs to ride this thing out. He needs to believe he can. We all do.

People are energy. They don’t die; they just take on different forms. The energy flooding out of the loft is good. I sense it, and Max senses it too. It is a space of infinite possibility and inspiration; a space that runs away with you; a blank page longing to be filled with lines and scratches of pencil and ink. However they land, they land in the right places, in the right shapes. This is my best work so far and the loft is my muse. The RPG box cover illustration is finished, scanned, emailed, and now I am working on an unplanned side project. Something special: a coffee table book about everyday life after the end of the world. Living With the Apocalypse. Four sketches down and I have found him on every page. Michael. Sometimes he is in the foreground, sometimes his is a

208 steven j. dines face at the edge of a ragged crowd, but he is always there; a survivor. Even on day seventy-five. I almost forget about Max. When he interrupts me at the dinner- cum-drawing table, I can hear his stomach complain. He doesn’t look too happy either, bored, and with a lost look in his eyes. His hair needs to be introduced to a comb and there’s a blackcurrant juice stain dry- ing on his collar. Michael, at the end of the world, looks in much better shape. I am a bad father. “Christ, Max, I’m sorry. I got caught up in this thing and completely forgot – ” about you, I almost finish. Max isn’t stupid though, and stomps through to the kitchen. “I’ll make you something to eat and then we can go out, if you want,” I finish. What are you doing? my muse protests. Never mind going anywhere, there is work to do. Great work. Before I can retract the offer, Max asks me from the kitchen, “Can we go to the park?” I am a bad father, but the apocalypse will have to wait.

Give me four walls and a ceiling. Max feeds the ducks and swans as I keep watch in case he slips on the muddy bank and falls in the water or one of the swans decides he is having a bad day and wants to pay it forward. Anything can happen. The world is a dangerous place. Children drown all the time and swans can kill a man never mind a four-year-old child. And all of this open space only steers my mind back to the loft. Maybe this is the start of me becoming an agoraphobic, I think. Since Michael’s disappearance I don’t go out unless I have to. Part of me believes, foolishly, that if I can make the world smaller there will be a better chance of finding him. Ergo, with space to run and an infinite sky over our heads, there seems to be little hope. Madness has its own unique logic, I suppose. “Stand back from the water, Max.” There are already two dozen ducks waiting for his next offering of stale bread. The swans hang back at a cool distance, knowing they can muscle in at any time, while a lone seagull skulks right at the back,

the space that runs away with you 209 wings raised in readiness for the swoop and steal. “Son of a bitch.” “Rob?” A woman’s voice at my back. I turn around and it’s Emily, standing there on the grass with a white Pomeranian on a leash. Max hears the thing yip and turns to see what it is, forgetting the ducks and their hangers-on for a moment. “Hello,” Emily says. “You must be Max. This is M.R. James. Would you like to play with him?” Max gives her a slow, shy nod. He can’t look her in the eye. I’m not the only one withdrawing from the world in small, hard-to-see stages. Emily unclips the leash, and M.R. James drifts away like a small white cloud in a gusty breeze. Max hands me the leftover breadcrumbs and follows, crouching in imitation of the dog’s size. Emily offers me a smile. “Cute. How is he?” “Fine,” I say. It’s easier than telling her I don’t know because I’ve been too busy looking for Michael in my mind and on the page. “You called your dog M.R. James?” She laughs, a shy, slightly embarrassed laugh. “No, that’s great,” I continue. “Naming your white Pomeranian after a writer of ghost stories. I should get a Saint Bernard and call him Stephen King.” I manage a smile of my own when she laughs, but behind it I’m aching with the effort of trying to be funny while Michael waits for me in the unfinished drawing back at the house. And did I remember to lock the front door? She asks me about my work and without hesitation I tell her that I’ve never been so productive in my life, like the stuff won’t pour out of me quick enough. “You sound inspired,” she says. “You know what,” I say, trying to play it cool as a swan. “I think I am.” Emily’s cheeks turn scarlet and I realise she thinks I meant her when I meant the loft. She looks into my eyes then glances at my lips and – this can’t be happening. Is someone in the house? She cannot want me to kiss her. What are they doing in there? Emily is waiting. For something that will never happen.

210 steven j. dines Michael is waiting, too. Somewhere. For something that… We kiss. Emily’s lips are young, soft, so full of hope. Someone is inside the house…looking at my drawings. An intruder. Heather, maybe. Looking in the loft…spoiling the magic. Fucking with my muse. “I’m sorry, Emily… I think – I think I have to go.” “Wait, was it the kiss? I’m sorry.” “No, it wasn’t that. Something is wrong. Back at the house.” “What is it?” “That’s just it, I don’t know.” “Can we talk about this sometime? Over Starbucks, maybe?” I nod. “Where’s Max?” Twice in one day; what is wrong with me? Why can’t I stay focused on him instead of – of this? And why can’t he stay in my sight? We find him standing on the bank a short distance down river, eyes overflowing with tears as he hurls one stone after another at something in the water. I don’t want to look but – It isn’t Michael. “Max, what are you doing?” I ask, suddenly furious. “That seagull over there,” he says, broken-hearted. It’s the son of a bitch I called a son of a bitch a moment ago. “It stole the last piece of bread out of my hand.” One of his fingers is trickling blood. The world is a dangerous place. We need to get back. Emily passes me a handkerchief, which I wrap around Max’s hand. What he can’t see won’t hurt him. Which is crap, because what you can’t see hurts you the most. “It was just a kiss,” I tell him, trying to make him – or myself – feel better. “That’s all it was. Just a little kiss from a seagull. Come on, let’s get you home.”

There is no intruder and the front door is still locked. Inside, I clean out Max’s cut with antiseptic wash and put an extra-large plaster over it to make him feel like a battle-wounded soldier. Still it doesn’t stop

the space that runs away with you 211 him crying. “You’re going to be all right, Max. It just nicked the skin. It’ll heal, son.” I will be drawing the seagull later on, I realise. Shoved into a pot of boiling water and suspended over a roaring fire. Supper for my apoca- lyptic family. And maybe – maybe Michael will find his way into camp for a bite to eat himself. After all, he must be hungry where he is. “I want to look in the loft, Dad,” Max says. “You’re not going up there,” I tell him. “Nobody is.” “Please, Daddy. I want to see if he’s up there. If Michael is up there.” It is the kiss in the park; it is the seagull stealing Max’s last piece of bread; it is Max, crying because he has a bleeding finger when his brother has been taken from us. I grab hold of Max, clutching the tops of his arms in a grip strong enough to cause him some discomfort. “He is up there if you close your eyes and wish it, Max. He is up there with all the other things you want to imagine are there with him. But if you look, the magic will spoil. You’ll ruin everything. Do you understand that?” It is the kiss in the park. Full of hope in the moment but dying slowly on my lips. “I want to look, Daddy.” “Be quiet, Max. Let me think.” “Let me go up. I want to see my brother.” “What, you think I don’t want to see him too?” This is not a good idea, I think. “Come on, upstairs.” Then I am walking up the stairs two at a time, pulling Max behind me by the hand not bitten, until we are standing underneath the loft hatch, both of us looking up as though expecting something to happen on its own. After a moment like this, I drag a chair through from the bedroom and position it below the hatch. Standing on the chair, I reach up and slide the lock bolt and push the hatch up and to the side. A black rectangle looks back at us. But I realise I cannot do it. I cannot climb inside. Every instinct tells me that if I look there is only the disappointment of answers waiting for me up there. It is Oz, the great and powerful, behind his curtain. If I do not look, maybe I can keep the kiss with Emily and leave it at that,

212 steven j. dines maybe I can keep drawing and continue to find him through it, but my gut feeling tells me that preserving these things somehow depends upon me not looking. Or it might. Either way, I cannot risk it. But maybe Max can; he has less to lose. “Do you still want to know what’s up there?” I ask. He nods solemnly. I reach down, place my hands under his arms, and lift him toward the space, averting my eyes downward in case I catch even a glimpse of what it contains. It is at this moment I realise that superstition has completely taken over my life. But I do not care. I am hoping this is a doorway to another world and that Michael is awaiting our rescue there. Then Max’s head enters the open hatch and, swallowed by the dark, vanishes from the neck up. Glimpsing this from the corner of my eye, I am tempted to pull him back and lower him to the floor. “Dad, I can’t see,” he says. “I need some light.” “All right. Climb up and I’ll get you something.” “Don’t let me fall.” “Max, don’t worry, I won’t drop you.” I wait until he has climbed all the way into the loft before I step down from the chair. His face peers down at me from the shadows enshrouding the hatchway, eyes wide with fear. “How long will you be, Daddy?” “One minute,” I tell him. “I’ll get the torch from the car boot. Just hold on.” “It’s cold up here. And stuffy.” “I imagine so. No one’s been up there since the house was built, remember?” “There’s a funny smell too.” “Dust, probably. Stay next to the opening until I get back, okay?” “ O k a y.” It takes me less than the minute I promised to locate the torch and return to my place under the hatch. But Max is gone. Then, “Daddy?” His voice, tremulous and faint – almost far away. “Have you found anything, Max?” I don’t want to know but at the

the space that runs away with you 213 same time I feel compelled to ask. I find myself hoping that he won’t tell me. “Daddy, I think there’s somebody up here.” A shiver takes its time to slide all the way down my back. Is it Michael? “Can you see him?” I ask. “Who is it?” No answer. “Max? What do you see?” “He isn’t up here.” A disappointed reply. “I want to come down now. I don’t like it. I want to come down.” A four-year-old scared of the dark. Nothing more. Meanwhile, my heart aches in my chest, caged in the moment when I walked into the front garden and found Max standing next to the space where Michael should have been. It is like losing him all over again. “I’ll shine the torch in the hatch,” I say. “Walk toward it.” When he is standing on the landing again and the hatch is locked, I ask him, “What did you see, Max? Anything? Anything at all?” He looks pale, like a ghost himself. But he is also frightened, upset, trying to be strong and not cry again, rubbing at his eyes so hard they are swollen and bloodshot. Heather will slaughter me tonight. I’ve let my four-year-old son peek behind the curtain because I was too afraid to do it myself. And Oz isn’t just a disappointment, he doesn’t exist. I am a bad father and this was a terrible idea. “Okay, Max, tell me what you think you saw?” I ask, trying again to get through to him. “Michael,” he says, matter-of-factly. “But it wasn’t him. It was noth- ing. Nothing at all.” A sad figure, he retreats into his room, silently closing the door in my face. In an example of perfect acoustic coincidence, the front door slams closed. Heather is home.

When Max comes out of his bedroom later, he is still in bad shape. Heather pretends not to notice, busying herself in the kitchen by

214 steven j. dines throwing out a dozen old eggs and replacing them with a dozen fresh ones. And suddenly I know why she is doing this. I feel more attuned to her tonight than I have done in months, and I realise it is because of the kiss with Emily. Guilt focuses the mind while ripping at the heart. And Michael liked eggs. Soft boiled usually, with soldiers to dunk in the yolk. I mention it to Heather and she gives me the kind of contempt-filled look she cannot produce in a moment but must have constructed over a period of months. After dinner, we sit on the couch and point our eyes toward the television. But it is abundantly clear we have all retreated into other rooms of the house: Max to the solitude of his bedroom, Heather to the kitchen with a bottle of wine, and me, to the landing under the loft, where I stare through the open hatch at the black rectangular abyss, wishing it would swallow me up.

I wake up and moonlight is crawling across the bed covers. Underneath, the bed is hot as a furnace. She has forgotten to turn off the electric blanket again. I want to wake her and say, Look, you forget things too. But blankets do not compare to boys, and besides, her cold, cold bones could use the warmth. You took your eyes off them, she said. It’s all on you. The ghost of our argument. I forgot about Michael liking eggs… Everything happens for a reason, Rob. That reason is you. …I forgot about him liking eggs and suddenly I am to be blamed for everything. I walk downstairs to the kitchen and look in the cupboards. I don’t know what I am looking for but I’ll know it when I see it. I have been telling myself this for seventy-five days. “It isn’t my fault,” I say. “Don’t you ever buy any soup?” So, that is what I want. Soup. There is a tin of Heinz Tomato and Basil on the shelf. That is what I want. And that is what I’ll have. If not control then Heinz Tomato and Basil Soup. Sometimes things just happen, Heather. There is no reason. They just are.

the space that runs away with you 215 I can feel the ghost of Heather’s cold fury in the kitchen beside me. It leans in close to whisper in my ear – Bullshit.

I wake up this time to the wail of a carbon monoxide detector in the kitchen and the smell of gas throughout the house. Heather switches on her bedside nightlight, pulls on her dressing gown, and throws open the window. I am much slower to rise, still drowsy from having had less than two hours sleep. I am wondering if this is in fact the tail- end of another nightmare when Max wanders into the room, rubbing the sleep crusts from his eyes and wrinkling his nose. “What’s that smell, Mummy?” he asks. “And what’s the alarm for?” “Gas,” Heather replies. “Carbon monoxide.” Carbon monoxide is odourless, actually; it is the coward hiding in the skirts of butanethiol. I read that somewhere; I don’t forget every- thing. But I don’t have the will to point it out to Heather; she hates me enough already. Call me a coward; call me carbon monoxide. Wait. This isn’t a dream; this is real. In my dreams, I can say anything to Heather and we usually end up fighting or fucking. What I never do is bite my tongue. “We need to get out of the house,” she says, panic rising through her voice. “Max, don’t put on any lights, okay?” Max is nodding. Crying, too. “What’s wrong?” Heather asks. “I was dreaming,” he says, “about Michael. Then the noise woke me up.” “That’s nice, honey, but we need to leave the house, okay? Give me your hand.” Max shakes his head. “Don’t you see? It’s him. He did it. He made the gas come out.” “Michael?” I ask, incredulous. “Max – no, it wasn’t him. And now isn’t the time. It wasn’t him, it was…” Me, I realise. The soup earlier. I forgot to turn off the burner or I did not turn it off enough or– “Christ, it was me. I forgot the…” “You left the gas on?” Heather yells. “What were you thinking?”

216 steven j. dines “I don’t know,” I tell her. “I thought maybe I’d try to kill us all. Look, just give me a second. I’ll run down and put it off. Meanwhile, open all of the windows up here. I’ll do the same downstairs.” But Max won’t move from the doorway. He makes himself into a spider web across the lower half of the door. “Get out of the way, Max.” “No, Daddy,” he says. “It wasn’t your fault. It was Michael.” “He didn’t do this. We’ve been through this already, this afternoon, remember? I let you look in the loft and he wasn’t there. Now let it go and let me past.” “Why did you let him look in the loft?” Heather interrupts. “He thinks Michael is up there, doesn’t he? I was trying to fix things like you asked.” I turn back to Max. “Are you going to move or do I have to move you?” He shakes his head. “I left the gas on, Max, me. It was a very stupid thing to do, but I did it, not Michael.” I ruffle his hair to soften his will. But we aren’t on a football field and he hasn’t just scored the winning goal; I am angry – with him as much as myself – and he is determined to get in the way of me fixing this. During our fight earlier, Heather mentioned the word divorce for the first time, and I am going to find a way to make everything all right. Somehow. “I forgot too,” he says. “The gas isn’t your fault either,” I tell him. Max nods but remains an X across the doorway. “Michael put it on,” he says. “It wasn’t Michael,” I yell at him. “He’s mad at me too.” Tears. The house is filling with gas and the boy gives me tears. I’ve tried the assertive approach and I’ve tried softly-softly, but if I go hard on him now Heather will do more than talk about divorce. There’s nothing else for it. “Okay, Max, why is he mad at you?” “I told you,” he says. “I forgot.” “And what did you forget?”

the space that runs away with you 217 “I don’t want him to hurt me.” “Max, it’s all right. You can tell me. What did you forget?” “I forgot to let him down,” he says. Not this again, I think. “He’s not in the loft. We’ve been through this. He’s not there.” “Yes, he is.” “No, Max, he isn’t.” “He is,” Max screams, running for the sanctuary of his room. “THIS ISN’T OUR HOUSE!”

The journey to our old place is ten minutes by car. I spend nine of them looking at the empty car seat in the back. I know that space. I do not know the child sitting in the other seat, staring out the window at the night closing in fast around him. Michael wouldn’t let me find my soldiers. He said he won the game and laughed at me. I park in the old spot. It is 3am, a thin layer of frost covers everything, preserving it until the morning when the temperature will rise and the world will thaw but a little. Brittle flowers line my old flower beds. Each blade of grass is almost ready to snap. And I forgot – not the window or the eggs: the ladder to the loft. But we looked inside the loft, I think. Me and the police. We looked and found nothing. This is where I found Max on the day his brother disappeared. He was picking soldiers up out of the grass and humming a tune to him- self. ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’. I knock on the door. No answer. There was wire in the loft. I put it round his hands and feet. There was tape. The silver kind. I put that on his mouth. Then I hid him in the corner behind the big tank, under the smelly old rug. And while we all looked with our eyes, we searched with our minds – out. Outside. Me, Heather, the police, we fixed ourselves upon the man-sized space that took away our boy. I press my face to the glass panel and peer inside. I see a decora-

218 steven j. dines tor’s ladder in the hallway and old sheets covering the wooden floor. A glance through the kitchen window offers empty countertops, no appliances. The new owners have not moved in yet. The rock feels cold in my hand. “Stay in the car, Max.” I wouldn’t want him to get in the way. Inside, I turn on the lights in every room on my way to the landing under the loft. The lights reveal the walls; the walls have changed col- our. Repainted beige, every one. For one head-spinning moment this is déjà vu and I am back in the rental property, looking up at the loft hatch, swimming in idle dreams, the stuff of hope – washing my skin with it, while here, here in this other space, I feel sick to the pit of my stomach.

the space that runs away with you 219 a The body looked bigger by moonlight. A six foot wedge of tarpaulin wrapped top, middle and bottom with electrical tape, it sat in the flat- bed of the truck looking bulkier than it had before. Maybe because now they had to move it. Had to bury it. Nate and Boyce stared at it a while. The moon was red in the sky, a bloody eye looking with them and not caring what it saw. “Alligator moon,” Nate said, seeing it. Boyce stared. “Yo, Bo.” “It look bigger to you?” “Some. It’s the tarp.” He looked up at the sky again. “We got us a blood moon up there.” “Seems right fitting.” “Heads or tails?” Bo laughed. When Bo laughed he’d suck in two or three breaths and then he’d spit. “You call it.” “Heads,” Nate said, but he grabbed the nearest end. He dragged it out as Bo wiped his palms on his pants and sidestepped left and right before taking some of the weight in the middle. Nate fed more of it to him and got both hands under his end of the body. “Fuckin’ heavier, too,” said Bo. “How far we takin’ it?” It was a humid night. Sticky. Nothing new for South Louisiana but nothing you got used to either. “Just a little ways.” They were parked by a cane field. They trampled their wayinto it with their burden. It sagged between them for a while and a few

220 ray cluley metres in Boyce dropped his end. Rather than pick it up, he grabbed the middle and helped drag it. “Here?” “Bit more.” They found a gap between the rows of crops that was deep enough in the field that no one would see them from the road. The truck, yeah, but not Nate and Bo, not unless they stopped to look for them. They dropped the body and exhaled together with a huff. Boyce put his hands to his back when he straightened and grimaced at the moon. Nate paced a few steps back and forth. “Get the shovel,” he said. “It’s your shovel,” Bo told him, “you get it,” but he did as he was told anyway. Nate squatted amongst the sugarcane, rested his arms on his thighs, and hung his head. He was tired. He’d been tired for days. “Why you care so much about this nigger anyways?” said Bo return- ing with the shovel on his shoulder and the six pack in his other hand. The shovel he shrugged off with little care, but the beers he put to the ground carefully. He unhooked one and slung it to Nate, then popped the tab on one for himself. “Saw his wife in the store,” Nate said. “Saw his boy, too.” Bo guzzled beer then nodded as if the answer was good enough. He bunched up the top of his grubby T-shirt and wiped his mouth with it. Nate put his can of beer down unopened and picked up the shovel. “I’ll dig for a spell,” he said. Bo nodded. Nate’s flannel shirt was soon damp with new sweat mingling with old, but once you got a rhythm going it was easy enough. In the dis- tance, a deeper darkness of rain cloud waited in the sky. “You ever fuck one?” Nate paused, leaning on the shovel, and wiped his brow. “Hey, Nate. You ever fucked a nigger?” “Woman of colour.” Bo snorted a laugh. “Sure. Whatever. Or a man of colour, if you’re liking that these days.” Nate tugged the shovel free and got back to tossing dirt.

gator moon 221 “I’ve done Mexican, if that counts,” Bo said. He crumpled the can he’d emptied, tossed it, and pulled another from the pack. “Ain’t never done no knee-grow though.” Bo thought on that a while as Nate heaved soil to one side. When he stopped to open up the last few buttons of his shirt, Bo handed him a beer and Nate swapped it for the shovel. Bo looked at it for a moment, shrugged, then hopped down into the shallow trench. Nate stepped out. The beer was warm. He rubbed the can across his brow but there was no moisture to be had. He only wiped his own sweat around. “You know, niggers in the old days did this with a hog,” Bo said, turning the soil. “Buried it in the field and made the moon go red with its blood or some bullshit.” “It’s dust in the air makes the moon red.” “Dust. Yeah. So?” He shook some spilled soil from the cuff of his pants. “Still red.” “And they didn’t bury the hog, just its blood. To make their crops grow. Make the cane bigger.” “Hog’s still dead ain’t it?” He looked at Nate. “Would’ve been easier to bury a hog.” Nate needed to walk around a bit, roll his shoulders, so he stepped over the body to pace a line of cane. But mid-stride, the body bucked beneath him. It flopped up in a violent spasm that tore some of the tarp. Nate yelled and staggered as it scissored again, stumbling as it writhed on the ground, and fell onto his back beside it. In the shal- low grave, Bo pushed the shovel away from himself and flattened up against the opposite bank of soil with a cry of “Jesus fuck!” Nate grabbed the handle of the shovel from where he lay and brought it up and over in a long arc overhead. It came down hard and the body was struck motionless for a moment. He got to his feet while it was stunned and hit it again. Finally he stepped the blade of the shovel down, tearing the tarp open and cutting into flesh. A line of blood spurted, dark and hot on Nate’s bare chest. He brought the blade down once more, driving it down with both hands, and then

222 ray cluley everything was still. “Careful,” Bo said, stepping forward, looking into the tarp. Nate grabbed a full can of beer and threw it at him. It caught him directly in the face and he fell back, clutching his mouth and nose. “Fuck!” he said at Nate, then clutched his face again. The can lay fizzing at his feet, a geyser of beer soaking his legs. “You ain’t dead, are ya? Just clipped you is all.” “All right,” Bo said, checking his hand for blood, touching his face, and checking again. “Okay. All right. I get it.” “What did you fucking shoot it with, a cap gun?” “I said all right, I get it.” Bo bent for the beer and put the hissing can to his mouth. He took a few gulps, then broke the tab open to drain it properly. Nate used the shovel to turn folds of the split tarp. Inside lay the body of an alligator. It looked dead, but it might not have been. He’d opened a gash in the yellow hide of its underbelly and there was a hole above one of the eyes from where Bo had supposedly shot it. “Tough sonofabitch,” Bo said, looking. “Didn’t wanna die, did it?” “Would you?” He rolled the gator to the shallow ditch they’d made. “This is good,” he said. “Yeah. This is better. We get its blood now, too. As it dies.” “I think it’s dead, Nate.” “Yeah, you said that before.” Bo climbed up out of the ground and Nate rolled the body in. The hole was just about deep enough but it wasn’t the right length. “Help me get this off.” Nate pulled at the tarp and Bo unfolded a knife to cut at the electrical tape. Most of the gator lay in the ground between them. When the tarp was off, Nate began scraping the soil away from beneath its tail so it would fit, shovelling the soil into the gaps around the rest of its body. Bo said, “I’m only doing this because you asked.” “Yeah, I know. Sorry about your face.” “That’s not what I meant. Why are you doing it?” “They deserve some help a little bit. They got a shitty crop and no old man to work it.”

gator moon 223 “Yeah, you saw them sad at the store, I know. Whatever. Got yourself an attack of good Samaritan, that’s fine. That’s your business. But you don’t believe this shit.” “They do.” The soil he dug away he tossed further down the trench. “You can’t know that,” said Bo. “Just because they’re niggers? Shit, plenty of ’em got the church now, Nate.” “Yeah, so?” “I’m just saying, slave days is over, for better or worse, and it don’t matter none even if you’re right and they do believe it. Burying a gator to bump their crops won’t work if they don’t know you gone done it in the first place.” Nate trod the tail down into the hole he’d opened up and used the shovel to drag loose soil over it. “You don’t need to know something’s happened to know it’s done something.” Bo threw his empty can into the grave. “That don’t even make sense.” “You spike a girl’s drink, she don’t know does she?” Bo grinned. “Not if you done it right.” “Gets horny, don’t she?” Bo didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. It didn’t matter none to Nate if he understood or not anyways. “You think it was racial?” Bo said eventually. “Paper said it was. You think it was?” “Bo, stop bullshitting me, you can’t read.” Bo sucked in his laugh a couple of times and spat. “They said he was beaten up good. His lady say anything in the store?” “She weren’t talking much about it.” “Figures. You think they’ll sell this place? It’s just her and the boy. I’d sell it.” “Would you buy it?” “Hell no.” “Think anyone else will?” “That why you’ve gone all Christian? This ain’t you, Nate. Helping thy neighbour. Burying a gator in her crops.” Bo clapped his hands on his knees. “That’s it, ain’t it? You want to buryyour gator in her crops.”

224 ray cluley He laughed, spat, laughed some more. “Pass me that there beer.” “Sure. No, wait, hang on. I’ll shut up.” Nate walked over the fresh ground a couple of times. “They won’t know what you done,” Bo said. “What?” A wind whispered through the cane. It was a warm wind, not light with the smell of the Gulf but heavy with the smell of swamp. Bo lifted his hands in surrender against what he saw in his friend’s face. “I ain’t going on about it no more.” He pointed at where a long line of earth rose up between rows of sugarcane. “I just mean they won’t know. You can barely see it any.” Nate nodded but trod it down some more. “He wore a coin,” he said, “around his ankle. To keep away the gris-gris, or something.” He looked at Bo. “You know. Bad luck.” “Didn’t work then, did it.” “Weren’t wearing it that night. His lady dropped it into the grave with his coffin.” Nate smoothed over the turned soil with the flat of the shovel blade. “They believe in all of it. Like I said.” “You was at the funeral?” “Joe Witters was. He told me.” “Must be true, then.” Bo watched Nate fuss a while longer with the grave. “What coin was it?” “I dunno. A dime?” “Hm. And where’s the nigger buried?” Nate looked at him. “Shady Acre. Why?” Bo took the shovel and raised it to make his point: “A dime’s a dime.” Nate shoved him, but he smiled. “You’re a real sonofabitch, you know?” “Daddy always said so.” “You don’t want no dead man’s dime, Bo. That’s bad luck too.” He picked up the remaining beers and the tarp. “Did they put a stone on his grave?” “Seriously, Bo.” “No, not a headstone, just a regular stone. On the dirt. Something

gator moon 225 big and heavy. Witters say anything about that?” “No.” “No what? No they didn’t, or no Witters didn’t say?” “Why?” “It’s supposed to keep the spirit from wandering.” “They probably did, then. Unless they want him to wander. Maybe he’s in this here field right now, wondering why you’re yabbering on when we’re done.” They made their way back though the canebrake to the truck. Bo tossed the shovel in back and slammed the tailgate shut. Nate tossed the tarp in with it and gave the beers to Bo who took them up front with him. They both looked at the sky before getting in the cab. The moon was a full dull red and watching them still but then a cloud swept by and the bloody eye closed. “Gonna be fierce tonight,” Nate said, looking at the clouds come in. The wind had picked up suddenly, or maybe they just hadn’t felt it in the field. It shook the cane around them. “Yeah,” said Bo. “Reckon you’re right.” Nate nodded. “Reckon it’s due.”

Nate dropped Bo off on his way home. For Nate, home was back off a track most people only took by mistake. Even so, you wouldn’t never see the house unless you were looking for it, and even then you’d get nothing but a brief glimpse between cypresses and leaning oaks draped with hanging moss. A line of chain with a stolen stop sign used to block the entrance to the drive up, and that maybe caught the eye of a passing driver once or twice, but Nate was out of the habit of hooking it back in place and now it lay in the dirt. He drove over it, bumped his way into dips and over stumps, and croaked the hand brake outside a one storey trying real hard to be none. “Home sweet home.” The white paint had been grey the whole time Nate owned it, had cracked and flaked and blistered off the wood entirely in most places. Lichen greened the guttering and the roof sagged in the middle. The porch leaned forwards and sagged in the middle too, as if in sympathy.

226 ray cluley One corner rested on cinder blocks. A window by the front door was missing a pane of glass. Nate had replaced it with a flap of cardboard torn from a box. He didn’t remember how it got broke in the first place. He killed the lights, grabbed the crushed can Bo had left on the seat, and stepped out of the truck. He threw the can in the direction of an old oil drum but didn’t listen to hear if it went in. The oil drum was ventilated with rust holes and peppered with rifle shot and he used it for burning garbage. Beer cans thrown from the porch lay around it in crushed and folded shapes like tiny corpses. The yard was knee high with weeds, the dirt packed down only where he drove in and drove out and where the tread of his boots walked a path to the porch. He used to cut the grass and weeds but the mower busted when he ran over the metal nozzle of a hosepipe. Coils of cut rubber pipe were still out there somewhere, a snake hiding in the grass. The mower was rusting behind the house, which was where he dumped anything small enough to carry that couldn’t be burned. There was a watermelon patch back there somewhere underneath it all, too, someone told him once. Big stuff, like the corroding frame of a swing set, he left where they’d always been. The jagged necks of beer bottles hung from cords tied to its horizontal bar, smashed glass beneath testament to Nate’s skill with a rifle, pock marked trees behind testament to the opposite. The swing seat dangled on one chain. It had belonged to whoever lived in the place before and Nate had kept it for his own boy, but the kid didn’t get brought for visits no more than three or four times. He’d be near the nigger boy’s age now anyways. Probably driving. Probably playing football or baseball and sticking his fingers in girls. Nate wasn’t missing nothing. He’d done it all himself and still remembered. The porch creaked where it dipped under his weight and the screen door whined open. With the reep-reep-reep of the frogs, such sounds were his only welcome home. He let the door bang shut behind him and went through to the kitchen. He left the lights off, letting the bulb in the fridge scare away the dark for a moment. The door rattled and tinkled when he opened it because all he had in it was bottled beer. He took one, popped its lid, and guzzled it by fridge-light. He took off his

gator moon 227 shirt, soaked a corner of it with beer, neverminding how much of it spilled on the floor, and used it to wipe the dried blood from his chest. He threw the shirt aside, shut the fridge, and took down a vest from where it hung on the sink. He pulled it on as he sat at the table. Nate stared into the dark neck of his beer bottle in the gloom of the kitchen and thought about the man he’d killed two days ago. Lawrence. Lawrence LeBlanc. Nate used to think the name was funny for a nigger. A man of colour. He didn’t think it was funny no more. The paper conjectured it was a racial attack but it weren’t nothing but an accident. Stupid nigger was walking at night with no light, how was Nate supposed to see him? When he did see him, the man was a sudden face at the windshield, a shape coming at him hard and fast in the dark, and then he rolled away into the night again. His feet kicked up behind him like he’d been yanked on a chain. Nate tipped the beer to his mouth and grabbed a crumpled pack of smokes from the table. The lighter needed a few tries but he got it to work. He threw it aside with his first puff and settled back into the hard chair. The smoke did little to hide the smell of rank water that sat beneath the house. A pipe had broke, and he’d fixed it, but the damage was already done. “Why’d you go out so late?” Nate said to his beer. He’d heard from someone that Lawrence had been looking for gators, and it seemed likely enough. The road was a single track out by the bayou. It was a shitty road with flooded woods either side, trees swollen or sinking dead into the water. It wasn’t a place to park your truck in the middle of the night and go walking, especially if the truck’s blue, and especially if your skin is as black as the night you walk in. Nate came up fast on the nigger’s truck, turning around it with barely a dick’s width to spare, and he’d been looking at it as he passed, won- dering at it being there, and then – wham! – he had a nigger on his windshield. Nate tapped ash into a saucepan at the centre of the table. It was crusty with some long ago meal and filled now with twisted cigarette butts. The nigger had twitched something fierce. Nate got out, checked his

228 ray cluley truck, and the man was casting shadows in the headlights from where he was propped against a twisted cypress. His eyes were open, one rolled white, and his legs were kicking. His head was flat on top, caved in at the crown, and Nate thought he was probably brain damaged. He knew a woman once who had a kid that was retarded and it weren’t no fun for anyone. He grabbed the shovel from his truck and used it till the man was still. “Should have dragged you to the water,” Nate said. He was staring at all the dead cigarette ends he measured his life by. He chased another swallow of beer with smoke, exhaling it with “Should have let the damn gators finish you. Walkin’ in the middle of the night with a wife and kid home. Hunting for some damn mojo to solve all your problems. Fuck.” He threw his beer and it exploded against the wall in a shower of glass and froth. Nate sighed. He stubbed his cigarette out on the table and dropped it into the pot. He ran his hands through hair that was longer at the back than on top and greasy with sweat. “Jesus Christ, who am I even talking to?” He clasped his hands behind his head and bowed to the table, resting on his elbows. He thought about calling Molly, wondered what she’d say after all this time. He figured a talk with her could go one of two ways. She’d either listen to him and then ask what it was he wanted and he wouldn’t know, or she’d remind him that Louisiana was made up of all the shit and sediment that got washed down river and tell him he weren’t no different. So he thought about driving back to Bo’s and talking to him about it. But Bo weren’t the kind you told things to. Shit, he’d sort of tried when he said about seeing them in the store, but that line of talk went nowhere. “You ever fuck a nigger?” Bo had said. Yeah, Nate thought, I gone fucked a whole family of them. When she’d come into the store that day Nate thought she’d come for him. She held herself straight, and though she was head to toe in black she made it look good. Serene. She wasn’t there for him, though, and she ignored everyone else looking at her, too. She went right to the counter where Lemmy was tallying up groceries. “I’m right sorry for your loss,” Nate told her as she moved by. He’d

gator moon 229 wanted to say more but didn’t know how. She gave him a curt nod. The boy, though. The boy gave him something different. That sonofabitch stared right into him. Couldn’t be no more than sixteen but he met eyes with Nate and stared his apology dead. Nate couldn’t breathe with that look on him, felt like he was drowning in the hot air of the store, and then someone else muttered condolences and the moment broke. It weren’t a scene, not really, but it might have been if the boy hadn’t quit staring. Nate had felt something underneath it, a mosquito drone buzzing under the quiet, the kind of noise you didn’t really hear but knew was there. Nate stood in line, waiting to pay for his beer, and the widow asked about her tab. Old man Lemmy wrote it down on a piece of paper on account of how quiet the store was. Whatever he wrote, she only gave that curt nod again and said she’d settle it as soon as she was able. Said she might sell the place, and her boy looked around as if daring anyone to say how difficult that would be. The kitchen lit up with the sudden sweep of headlights outside and was dark again just as quickly as whoever it was turned around. Nate waited to hear them drive away again, but the engine only idled. “You’re too late, Bo,” he said, getting up. He’d talked it through in his head enough already. He didn’t want to say none of it out loud, not now. He’d have another beer or two with him, if that’s what he was offering, but that was all. A man weren’t a man unless he had a secret to take to the grave.

The truck next to his in the drive was blue. It had turned around to leave but hadn’t yet. The engine was grumbling quietly. The tailgate was down and the flatbed was empty but Nate couldn’t see anybody through the window of the cab. It wasn’t Bo’s truck. It was the one Nate had seen on the single track through the bayou. It was the nigger’s truck. Lawrence’s truck. Nate pushed the screen door open but went no further than the threshold. “What you want?” He held the door open with one hand, patted at the wall beside him for the porch light. It was quiet out there. Even the frogs had stopped their reeping. There was only the engine of

230 ray cluley the truck, Lawrence’s truck, and nevermind that Lawrence was dead. But a man hunting gators would take his boy, wouldn’t he? Of course he would. “You’re Lawrence’s boy, ain’t you?” Nate called into the dark. “What you want?” He found the switch and flipped it but there was no light. He looked up to see if the bulb had been broken but it was still there. Maybe it had been loosened. Nate’s rifle was still racked in the truck. “Look, I’m real sorry about what happened to your daddy, but you got no right being here.” He was damned if he was going to let some kid spook him. He stepped out onto the porch, let the door slap shut behind him, and heard the boards creak in their familiar way underfoot. Then he heard something else. A shuffle. He looked to his right and saw nothing. But when he looked down he saw the long dark shape of an alligator on his porch. “That’s about right.” He went for his truck as the gator attacked. It didn’t do no more than clip him, but it hit his shin hard and he fell down the steps and sprawled on the ground. He pulled up handfuls of grass getting to his feet, managed a few steps more, then tangled his feet in an old coil of hosepipe and fell again. He struck his chin hard and stunned himself some. So he rolled onto his back, ready to kick. Nate saw the weeds part at his feet, saw the side-winding shape of the alligator, and then the sky flared. The lightning kept itself within the clouds, but the sudden bright pulse and flicker of it revealed the gator in a quick sequence of images. It lunged, its mouth open, and sank its teeth into Nate’s thigh. Then the two of them were thrashing in the grass and thundering dark. Nate grabbed its head, trying to stop it from twisting and tearing chunks from his leg. His other leg kicked in uncontrollable spasms. He rolled when the animal rolled, prehis- toric muscle tumbling under him and over him, the alligator trying to drown him on dry land because it was instinct, habit, and you couldn’t change things that were part of yourself.

gator moon 231 They knocked the oil drum over. Nate swept his arm through the trash. He found a burnt broken length of guitar neck and stabbed at the animal’s scaled head but the wood split and crumbled in his hand with the first hit. The gator released him, only to strike higher, clamping down on Nate’s hands. Nate roared. He kicked at its belly. He pushed up at the tapered end of its snout, pushed down, felt the teeth moving in his palms but pushed anyway, trying to prise the jaws open. It released him only by tearing meat from the bone, wrenching a chunk of flesh away with some of Nate’s fingers. It snapped its head back and gulped them down. Nate screamed his agony to the sky. He was answered by another rumble of thunder, deep and heavy. The gator came in again. Nate pushed at its head with ruined hands. He raked limp fingers over the horny scutes and ridges of its body as it settled its weight onto him again. He tried to find something he could grip enough to turn it away from him. He found a leg that was scrambling as frantically as he was as the animal tried to claw a path up his flesh. He wrenched at this, yelling with the pain it caused him, but a hard twist and suddenly it was off of him. Nate felt something break away in his grip and clutched it in his fist. The thrashing of the animal’s heavy tail hit him once, twice, and then it was passing him. Nate lay panting when he knew he should be rolling, getting up, running. He just couldn’t. He held his weak fist up to the light to see a leather cord. Dangling from it was a coin, wet with his blood. He recognised it. It was a dead man’s dime. Throwing it aside, he twisted onto his stomach with the same motion and tried to push himself up from the ground. He couldn’t. He lay in weeds awash with red from the truck’s rear lights, staring at the blood on his hands. The clouds pulsed and thunder grumbled. It sounded to Nate like the throaty sound of an alligator, and it felt like something coming from himself, something that wouldn’t be still until it was broken. Or maybe it was just the engine noise of the truck pulling away as Nate bled into the ground. He dragged himself across a circle blackened from ancient oil drum fires and red with rust and found within it the bloody coin he had torn from the gator’s body. It lay heads up to the sky.

232 ray cluley Nate turned himself over to do the same as a full red moon came out from the clouds. “What are you looking at?” Its only answer was to slip away again behind black clouds. “Sorry,” Nate said. It didn’t matter none, but he said it anyway. “I’m so sorry.” Something came at him hard and fast in the dark. It would never let go.

gator moon 233 a They never tell you how much it’s going to hurt. They never compliment you for having the strength to sit, day after day, in the wooden benches – pews, some judges call them – and listen to the prosecuting attorney, who is supposed to be on your side, describe how the monster across the aisle murdered your daughter. “Murdered” is such a tame word. “Slaughtered” would be better. How this creature took her from the bus stop one block from your home, and taught her everything she needed to know about cruelty and violence, everything a young girl shouldn’t know. Everything a young girl shouldn’t even imagine. Not at the age of twelve. You can still remember how she felt when she was born. All six pounds, eight ounces of her, so small that she fit in the palm of your hand. Her skin was softer than any human’s ought to be, her tiny heart beating against your palm. Your wife looks at you, her hair plastered to her sweat-covered face, and in her eyes, you see joy and possibility and hope, and know those emotions are reflected in your own. Plus one more. Your daughter, she wasn’t real to you until that moment. Sure, you felt her kick inside your wife’s womb, and you placed your ear against your wife’s expanding stomach, listening to the activity within. But that activity wasn’t human. It didn’t have squinched-up eyes, and tiny perfect hands, and the prettiest little angry mouth you have ever seen. You think about her like that – dangling on your big palm, her neck

234 kristine kathryn rusch and head braced by your fingers, her feet brushing against your wrist – and you think about her the way she was when the monster finished with her, torso a mass of twenty-seven stab wounds, skin so bloodless it looked gray. You cannot think of her any other way. Your wife cries at night when she thinks you’re not listening. Little hitching sobs, so silent they sound like sleep-breathing, only they aren’t. They’re a manifestation of a grief so complete that it awes you, makes you worry about the power of your own. Yours doesn’t manifest as sadness. Yours is anger, through and through. And so, sitting here, the monster only a few feet away, is sheer tor- ture. You spend your days envisioning ways of jumping across the aisle, taking his thick neck in your hands, and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. Some days, you pummel him to death, the blood spattering on his lawyer, a dapper little man who has the audacity to smile at you every single morning. But most of the time, you grab the monster by his state-purchased necktie, push up the knot until he chokes, his eyes staring into yours. You make sure you’re the last thing he sees, like he made sure he was the last thing your daughter ever would see. That breaks your heart the most: her last emotions were disbelief and terror; her last thoughts fear and disgust; her last words pleas for help. Help that never came. You remember the January after she turned six. She went sledding on the hill behind your house, and got stuck in the deep snow. You were reading the morning paper when her shrill voice reached you: Daddy! Daddy! Help! Help me! Help! You ran outside in your slippers, and found her. The snow wasn’t that deep for you. You pulled her out, and she clung to you, wet parka against your good white shirt, cold face buried in your hot neck. I thought you weren’t going to come. I thought I was going to die. Oh, Daddy, I’m so glad you’re here.

trial 235 You hear those words every night as you lay beside your wife, hands tucked behind your head, just like you used to do when life was going well. Then you were so smug. Not that you thought your life was perfect – you didn’t – but you knew that most people would never achieve what you had: a pretty daughter, a well-paying job, a wife who loved you. Now that life is hollow. You’re on leave from your job partly, you think, because your colleagues can’t bear to look at you, your boss shakes his head ever so slightly whenever he sees you, and the owner of the company keeps paying you out of some form of misguided guilt. You keep offering to come back, and they tell you to go to the trial, take time off, get this thing settled. But it doesn’t settle. It will never settle. The prosecutor, a good-looking man just your age, but trim with a sparkly for-the-cameras smile, says justice won’t replace your daughter, but it will help. Your wife seems to believe that with a fervor you’ve only seen in evangelical Christians. You know better. You know you’ll be haunted each and every day with the thought that your daughter, who screamed your name when she was stuck in the snow, screamed for you when the monster grabbed her and shoved her in his car. She screamed, believing that she was going to die, yet knowing you would come for her because you had before. Every time she was in trouble, you freed her. You got her out. You liked being her hero. It was part of your identity, the best part of who you are. But you didn’t hear. That morning, you had already left for work. While your daughter died in an abandoned house only three blocks from yours, you were sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the inter- state, taking calls from clients whose names you can no longer remem- ber. The radio blared your favorite a.m. show, talk mixed with a few oldies, lots of traffic reports, and “banter”. You used to like the banter. You used to find the most dreadful things funny. Now you have no idea when you last laughed. You believe laughing is a sin with the same fervor with which your wife believes the pros-

236 kristine kathryn rusch ecutor. You also know someday you will laugh again, and in your heart, you already feel the betrayal. It’s akin to listening to a too-loud radio, talking on a cell phone in a sea of humming car engines, while the one person who trusts you above all others screams for you as she gets stabbed to death. You think about this every day, run through the scenario over and over, as if reviewing the situation will prepare you for the next time. There will be no next time because there will be no more daugh- ters, despite what well-meaning idiots say. Get on with your life, have another child, move forward. As if one baby can replace another, as if holding another child on the flat of your palm will abolish the memory of the first child that laid there, all red and wrinkly from her struggle with birth. You say nothing to these people. You smile politely when others rec- ommend grief counseling to help you “get past this”. You nod when the prosecuting attorney reminds you to find outlets for your pain. You think your wife is doing that, with her little hitching sobs. You cry too, only not as often. It’s inadvertent. You’ll listen to a piece of testimony and find tears on your cheeks, or see a TV commercial fea- turing a little girl in a park, and discover that you can’t swallow. But these don’t feel like little outlets. They make no difference on the pressure building inside. Three days ago, after the police officer who answered a neighbor’s call about screams (no one says what those screams were, but you know. You know) testified about catching the monster in the act (too late, of course, to save her. She had been dead nearly an hour), the prosecuting attorney pulls you aside and whis- pers: Go home. You don’t need to hear this. He’s right; you don’t need to hear it. You don’t need any of this. You’re beginning to think that justice, simple justice, is a misguided term. No one should have to suffer through the trial of a man who was caught stabbing an already dead child. No one should have to pay for his incarceration, his meals, his clothing. His tie. You stare at his tie. He wears it every day. It is a deep burgundy red, the color of arterial blood when it flows from a stab wound. You think

trial 237 even a few twists aren’t enough. You should be allowed to stab him twenty-seven times. A doctor should be present to revive him every time he passes out. Twenty-six of the stab wounds should be shallow enough so that he doesn’t die of blood loss and fear before the final wound. You want him to know pain. You want him to know suffering. You want him to understand how one little girl felt in the last, most horrible minutes of her life. To know, to understand, to empathize. That’s where your plan breaks down. Because this monster cannot empathize. He sits in his wooden chair, passing hand-scrawled notes to the high-profile defense attorney who took this case to drum up more clientele by getting his face on television every night, and sometimes – at least once a day – the monster smiles. And laughs. Monsters aren’t supposed to laugh. They aren’t supposed to be defi- ant when faced with the enormity of what they’ve done. They aren’t supposed to enjoy anything, for god’s sake, because that might mean that they’ve enjoyed everything. So you sit, impotently, your hands clenched in your lap, your wife at your side, and stare because you can do nothing else. And you worry that when this case is done, and the monster is put away at the state’s expense – at your expense – hiring lawyers who will appeal his conviction on the smallest of technicalities as if his life matters so much more than her life ever did – you worry that the anger you feel will spill over into the emptiness and inhabit the quiet house the way your daughter once did. Instead of her high-pitched, off-key warbling, you will hear the harshness of your own breath; instead of her goofy dances as she listens to your favorite music, you will let that music tumble you into your own darkest fantasies. You are afraid that some day you will grab a tie, and twist it, and then decide that cutting off someone’s air just isn’t vicious enough. But for now, you know you should get a medal for sitting here quietly, calmly, seething only inside, as your bright-eyed daughter, once filled with joy and hope and possibility, becomes a “victim” and a “corpse”.

238 kristine kathryn rusch You should get a medal for refusing to complain every time someone refers to the monster as “mister” and frets about the monster’s rights. You should get a medal for keeping your fists clenched and letting only your imagination leap across that aisle, day after day, moment after moment, wishing – no, praying – for that man’s ugly death with the same fervor your daughter once had when she prayed for you to come and save her, knowing deep down that prayers will never get heard, and wishes will never – again – come true.

trial 239 a Melanie Tem’s work has received the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards. She has published eleven solo novels and four collaborative novels. In Concert, a collaborative short story collection with her husband Steve Rasnic Tem, was published in 2010, and solo stories have recently appeared in Asimov’s and Interzone, and anthologies such as Supernatural Noir, The Devil’s Coattails, and Black Wings. The Tems live in Denver. They have four children and four granddaughters. Melanie’s website is www.m-s-tem.com.

Simon Avery lives and works in Birmingham. He has had short fiction pub- lished in a variety of magazines and anthologies including The Third Alternative, Crimewave, Black Static, The Best British Mysteries IV, Beneath the Ground and Birmingham Noir. A novella, The Teardrop Method, is forthcoming from TTA Press.

Stephen Volk is best known as the creator of the drama series Afterlife and the notorious Ghostwatch. His other screenplays include 2011’s The Awakening, Ken Russell’s Gothic, and The Guardian directed by William Friedkin. His short stories have been selected for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and The Best British Mysteries, and he has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker, British Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Awards. His latest books are the acclaimed novella Whitstable which features the horror star Peter Cushing (Spectral Press), and his second collection Monsters in the Heart (Gray Friar Press). His website is stephenvolk.net.

Antony Mann is a winner of the Crime Writers’ Association UK Short Story Dagger. His work has appeared in Crimewave many times, as well as our sister magazine Interzone. His short story collections Milo & I and Candy Moments are currently available from Really Blue Books online.

240 crimewave 12 Janice Law is an acclaimed author of mystery fiction. The Watergate scandal inspired her to write her first novel, The Big Payoff (1977), and she went on to write eight more in the series. She’s also written the historical mysteries The Countess and All the King’s Ladies, plus three stand-alone suspense novels: The Night Bus, The Lost Diaries of Iris Weed, and Voices. Since then, Janice has focused on writing short stories, many of which appear in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Fires of London (2012) is her most recent novel. She lives and writes in Connecticut.

Joel Lane lives in Birmingham. His publications in the weird fiction genre include four short story collections, The Earth Wire, The Lost District, The Terrible Changes and Where Furnaces Burn – the latter a book of supernatural crime stories set in the West Midlands – as well as a novella, The Witnesses are Gone. A booklet of his short crime stories, Do Not Pass Go, was published in 2011.

Stephen Bacon’s short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Black Static, Shadows & Tall Trees, Nemonymous, Horror For Good, Mur- murations, and The Black Book of Horror. His work has been reprinted in The Best Horror of the Year. Forthcoming is an appearance in Cemetery Dance magazine and 2014 will see Spectral Press release his chapbook Simulacra. His debut collection, Peel Back the Sky, was published in 2012 by Gray Friar Press. He lives in South York- shire with his wife and two sons. His website is stephenbacon.co.uk.

Tim Lees is author of the much-praised novel Frankenstein’s Prescription (Tar- tarus Press), described by Publisher’s Weekly as “a philosophically insightful and lit- erary tale of terror”. He has been a staple of TTA Press for many years. A new story, ‘Unknown Cities of America’, appears in issue 249 of Interzone, and ‘The Bigfoot House’ is scheduled for TTA’s second Flux supplement. Tim is British but now lives in Chicago. He occasionally rants at timlees.wordpress.com, and has been known to tweet.

JAMES COOPER is the author of the short story collections You Are The Fly and The Beautiful Red. His novella Terra Damnata was published by PS Publishing in 2011 and was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award; Strange Fruit will appear from the same publisher soon. Also forthcoming is Country Dark from our own TTA Novellas, the novel Dark Father from DarkFuse, and the short story collection Human Pieces. You can visit his website at jamescooperfiction.co.uk.

hurts 241 Christopher Priest has published thirteen novels, four short story collec- tions and a number of other books. His novel The Separation won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the BSFA Award. In 1996 Chris won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Prestige, which was filmed in 2006, directed by Christopher Nolan. Another novel, The Glamour, is about to be filmed by director Gerald McMorrow. His latest novel, The Adjacent, was published in June 2013.

Danny Rhodes is the writer of the contemporary novels Asboville and Soldier Boy. A new novel, Fan, will appear from Arcadia Books in April 2014. His most recent short fiction has found a home inRustblind and Silverbright (Eibonvale Press), Horror Library 5 (Cutting Block Press) and The Christmas Ghost Story Annual 2013 (Spectral Press). He lives and writes in Kent, where he also masquerades as the chil- dren’s writer Dan Street. His latest title for children is the mystery novel Storm Flight (Little Devil Books). Visit his websites at dannyrhodes.net or danstreetwriter.com.

With ‘The Space That Runs Away With You’ Steven J. Dines becomes one of a small number of authors to have stories appear in all three of TTA’s periodicals. Check out his other work in issue 246 of Interzone and issues 31, 35 and 37 of Black Static. He is currently writing more short fiction and editing a novel. Originally from the north-east of Scotland, Steven currently lives in Salisbury. For more information, visit stevenjdines.com.

Ray Cluley’s work has appeared in numerous places, including our own Black Static and Interzone, Shadows & Tall Trees, and various anthologies. He has appeared in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year and Steve Berman’s Wilde Stories 2013: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction. His story ‘Shark! Shark!’ was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award in 2013. Ray also writes non-fiction, but generally he prefers to make stuff up. You can find out more at probablymonsters.wordpress.com.

Best known for her science fiction, Kristine Kathryn Rusch also writes award-winning mysteries. She has been nominated for the prestigious Edgar award, the Anthony Award, the Shamus award and has won the Ellery Queen Reader’s Choice award many times. Her most recent mystery novels are Spree and Hitler’s Angel, although her most controversial novel, Bleed Through, is also a crime piece. She also writes highly acclaimed mystery novels as Kris Nelscott, now available in the UK for the first time.

242 crimewave 12

“The most consistently rule-breaking collection of crime fiction published” Ed Gorman

“A collection of crime fiction like no other, dark and tinged with the surreal” Rick Kleffel

“Weird, dark and disturbing short fiction with plenty to unsettle, surprise and frighten the reader” Cath Staincliffe

“There is nowhere else readers can find such a stimulating mixture of crime” Mat Coward

£12.99

isbn 978-0-9553683-7-0

www.ttapress.com