In the Dark Page 16

  Mikey had started thinking about a visit to Linzi’s while he’d been busy with Easy and Theo, and now, walking home from her place, he wondered why doing that kind of stuff made him so horny.

  Linzi wasn’t a whore, not really. She only took money from a couple of the boys, her favourite ones, and she certainly wasn’t like any of those skanky bitches they’d visited earlier. She was sweet and knew what he liked. She said he looked nice without any clothes on, that she liked something to get hold of, and she always told him good stories about the others afterwards, when the spliff came out. Funny shit about how SnapZ had a tiny dick, or the way As If had cried once after she’d wanked him off.

  Priceless . . .

  He stopped thinking about why he’d gone. Decided that it didn’t matter, that at the end of the day he couldn’t think of a better way to spend some of the cash he’d made that night. They’d divided it up back at Easy’s, then spun down to the Dirty South for a few drinks: bright blue Hypnotics all round. He’d cruised the main bar for an hour, shown some of the crew the pictures on his phone and flashed a few big notes around.

  Until he’d felt like walking across to Linzi’s place all the more.

  Now, he was hungry . . .

  It was only five minutes back to the estate, but he didn’t want to risk waking his mum by rattling around in the kitchen, and then getting screamed at. He decided to cut over onto the main road, pick up something from one of the kebab places that stayed open late.

  He turned the corner and saw the old man walking towards him; saw him look up and then drop his eyes to the pavement. He knew that he scared people like this. He pulled up his hood and dropped a shoulder to put a little more meat into the swagger; to put the terrors into the old boy.

  One last buzz before bed.

  He walked past, pushing the shoulder close, letting the poor fool think he had something coming. With his hood forward he never saw the old man’s reaction. Never saw him stop a few feet on and reach into the pocket of his coat.

  Mikey only realised what was going on when he heard his name called and turned around. A second or two before the gun was raised and the old man shot him in the face.

  While Mikey was still dropping hard, the old man was turning and walking quickly away. Hands in his pockets. Still muttering about how the world was going mad.

  Javine smelled wonderful: cocoa-butter on her neck and something sweet and citrus in her hair. He pressed himself against her, hands roaming across her back and buttocks as she pushed her tongue into his mouth, but still he stayed soft beneath her fingers.

  She moved her mouth away from his and whispered. ‘Don’t you want to?’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘You don’t seem tired.’

  He untangled himself and rolled away. ‘So how do I seem?’

  There was an engine racing in the street below, voices raised.

  ‘Like you want to fight.’ She raised the pillow behind her. ‘Like you’re happier having a fight.’

  ‘You’re talking rubbish.’

  ‘It’s been nearly a week.’

  He let out a long, slow breath. ‘I’m working more, all right?’

  ‘I know . . .’

  ‘You not happy with the extra money?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m happy.’

  ‘So stop having a go.’

  Javine didn’t say anything else, and soon the silence between them threatened to drown out the noise from the street. Theo was relieved when she turned her head at the whimper from the next room, and threw back the duvet.

  He’d left the Dirty South before the others, content to leave them there taking the praise and milking it. He thought he’d slipped in quietly enough, but Javine had turned over, called out his name in the dark as he’d been getting undressed and talked herself awake.

  Asked him how his night had been.

  He’d come away from Easy’s with four hundred pounds, knowing that the three of them had made at least a grand and a half. Maybe he’d been right. Maybe Easy was taking a slice in return for the part he’d played in moving him up; for giving him the break. Maybe Easy didn’t think he’d earned a proper cut. He didn’t know what Mikey’s share had been, hadn’t wanted to talk about it with him there.

  But he’d find out tomorrow. Ask Easy what was going on.

  He lay there and tried to concentrate on the money; to make it about the cash and the things it could buy. It was easier to do that than think about how he’d made it, and what he’d done to be in that position.

  ‘Besides, kind of job we’re doing tonight, that’s the reason you shot into that bitch’s car in the first place, isn’t it?’

  Thinking back a week, it felt like being scared of heights and jumping because that was the easiest way to stop being afraid.

  ‘Lift it up, man, lift that thing up high. Show her what you got.’

  ‘What she gettin’.

  ‘Do it . . .’

  He still thought they could come crashing in at any moment. Easy could talk about how solid the crew was all he damn well wanted. Theo still froze at every siren; felt the slam of every door like a hammer coming down.

  Javine came back in and got into bed. Slid across and said, ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘That’s good . . .’

  She lay her hand on his belly and her head on his chest, began to kiss it all the way down. Theo closed his eyes and willed himself to get hard. To forget the image of a knife and a ragged hole; of a bloody smear across shiny black gaffer tape.

  He’d put out some leftover chicken on a paper plate; watched when, an hour earlier, the dog fox had come loping across the lawn. It had stopped a few feet away from the food and sat down, wary. Then it had walked around to the other side of the plate and waited another few minutes before finally tucking into the free meal.

  Nothing wrong with being careful, Frank had thought.

  Now the garden was dark again, save for the dim lights in the beds, and Frank sat with a crossword in his lap and a glass of wine at his side. He preferred the cryptic puzzles, liked to time himself, but this one had him beaten all ends up. He couldn’t get his brain into gear.

  Clive had called a short time before. Brought him up to speed on the pub refit and on a bolshie site manager who had been causing him grief on a housing development up west. And the business in Lewisham.

  Clive was good at what he did and always used people who were equally adept. Everything was in hand.

  He looked up from the paper when Laura walked in. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair looked wet, as though she’d recently stepped out of the shower.

  ‘You missed the fox,’ he said.

  ‘I was watching from upstairs.’ She walked across to the window and leaned against it. She looked at him, like she was waiting to be told something else, but after a few seconds he went back to the puzzle.

  He glanced up again when he heard her crying. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘What did you do?’

  He took off his glasses. ‘You know, so why are you asking? You don’t want to hear the details, do you?’ She always knew. There was nothing he could keep from her, never had been. He’d known this conversation would happen from the moment he’d shown her the newspaper story a few days before.

  She lifted her arm and pressed the sleeve of the T-shirt against her face. ‘Is that the end of it?’

  He dropped the paper at his feet. ‘Not even close.’

  ‘It won’t change what’s happened, will it?’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘It won’t help Paul.’

  ‘Maybe it’s helping me,’ Frank said. ‘You know what I’m like about letting people down.’ That set her off again. ‘You’re the only one who knows what I’m like.’

  She nodded and moved towards him.

  Behind her, the motion lights came on in the garden, but Frank didn’t take his eyes from hers. She was walking over, and she was leaning down to kiss him on the cheek, and that was more important
than anything.

  The boys who hung around by the garages got to Mikey first. They’d heard the gunshot and knew the difference between that and a firework or a car backfiring. Most people on the estate did, of course, and there were already several police cars on their way, but the boys didn’t know that.

  They stood around the body, five of them, looking down. They took it in from all angles, as curious as any other ten- or eleven-year-old would be.

  For two of them, it was the first one they’d seen up close.

  Somebody said something about the chains, about how Mikey wasn’t likely to miss them, and another boy started talking about where the wallet might be. But the boy they all listened to, the one marked out by Wave for better things down the line, told them to shut their stupid mouths and show the respect that was due.

  Told them that was not the way things were done.

  They heard the sirens then, and somebody shouting from the estate behind them. Before the last boy turned away, he nudged the toe of his trainer forward; dabbed it into the pool of blood that was still spreading behind Mikey’s head and running towards the gutter.

  ‘Sticky,’ he said.

  PART THREE

  WOLVES AND LEOPARDS

  TWENTY

  ‘I know we’re not supposed to like these places,’ Deering said. ‘I know it’s trendy to slag them off because they’re taking over the world or whatever. But I do like the coffee.’ The funny, strangled laugh. ‘I really like the coffee . . .’

  He was odd, no question, but Helen had decided that he wasn’t quite the weirdo she’d marked him down as after the phone messages. Maybe the whole ‘God bless’ thing was just a verbal tick. Even if it wasn’t, it didn’t look like he’d be trying to persuade her to let Jesus into her life any time soon.

  Helen was drinking tea. ‘I like the coffee too,’ she said. ‘But the baby isn’t so keen. Starts jumping around like a lunatic.’

  Deering had called that morning, after Helen had spent most of an unpleasant Friday and Saturday arguing with people: with Paul’s mother, who refused even to talk about ‘rock’ music at his funeral; with Jenny, who told her that they wouldn’t be needing any of Paul’s old clothes, but thanks for the offer; with her old man, who had taken umbrage at suggestions she’d made when he was struggling to put the cot together. Deering had asked if she fancied a coffee, and the idea of talking to a virtual stranger about it all, of getting things off her chest, sounded like a good one.

  There was plenty to offload.

  He’d picked her up just after ten, then driven down to the Starbucks near Brixton tube station. The place wasn’t busy and Helen had made for a table in the window, thinking that she could people-watch if the conversation flagged. A quick coffee had turned into brunch, with toasted paninis and chocolate brownies that Deering had insisted on paying for, and when Helen saw that it was almost midday, she realised that they’d talked for nearly two hours without a break.

  That she’d talked.

  ‘I think your reactions to other people get more extreme,’ Deering said. ‘After you lose somebody.’ He twisted a button of the faded denim jacket he was wearing over a dark polo shirt.

  Helen had been surprised at how much younger he appeared outside the workplace, even though he’d made no attempt to hide his premature baldness. She thought his accent was stronger too, and wondered if he subconsciously suppressed it when he was dealing with other technicians and police officers.

  ‘You’re more likely to feel elated at any scrap of good news. Or to lose it with somebody when they annoy you.’

  Helen said that she knew what he meant, that this was exactly how she had been feeling, but that there hadn’t been much in the way of elation. Certainly not over the previous few days.

  She had managed to control herself during the confrontation with Paul’s mother, telling herself that this woman, with whom she’d never really seen eye to eye, was every bit as destroyed as she was. Helen still did not know if Paul’s mother knew about the affair, and she wasn’t likely to ask. The row with her father had been no different to a hundred they’d had over the years. The old man did not like being told what to do. He’d passed that on to both of his daughters.

  But it had got seriously nasty round at Jenny’s.

  Sitting through a pleasant Saturday afternoon lunch; Tim with one eye on the football and the kids playing nicely. If anything, they were a little too well behaved, and Helen guessed that they’d been briefed not to say or do anything that might upset Auntie Helen. There was certainly no mention of Uncle Paul.

  In the kitchen later, Jenny had said that she’d spoken to Tim and that he already had too many clothes as it was; that their own trip to the charity shop was long overdue. Helen had flown off the handle and Jenny had walked calmly back into the living room and told the children to go and play upstairs. It hadn’t ended well, and Helen had not spoken to her sister since.

  Now she sighed, but she could still remember the urge to throw something at Jenny, to scatter some of that nice, expensive crockery across the granite worktop. ‘I’m buggered if I’m going to be the one to try and smooth things over.’

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ Deering said. ‘Everything’s . . . heightened.’

  ‘I’m angry with Paul more than anyone.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Really furious.’

  ‘Your emotions are all over the place.’

  Helen nodded, thought, Still no tears, though, then said it.

  ‘That’s normal, too. By which I mean there’s no such thing as behaving “normally” at a time like this. There’s no . . . template for grief, you know?’ He twisted the button again. ‘I went pretty mad myself.’

  ‘Oh. Who?’

  ‘My wife.’ Deering smiled. ‘A brain tumour, eighteen months ago.’

  Helen studied him. Suddenly the man’s attention to her, his solicitude, seemed to make perfect sense. She opened her mouth, struggling for the right words, but Deering saved her the trouble.

  ‘She always had a lot of headaches, was pole-axed by the bloody things two or three times a week.’ He placed a hand flat against his head, just above the right ear. ‘We just called them migraines, and Sally wasn’t one of those people who’d rush round to the doctor’s at the drop of a hat. By the time I’d talked her into it, she only had a few months.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I should have been a bit more pushy.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ She watched him shrug, and lean forward, and move the empty cups away from the centre of the table. Watched him drop a dirty spoon into each one and line them up, so that the handles were perfectly parallel. ‘So, how were you? Afterwards.’

  He blew air from between pursed lips, like he didn’t know where to begin. ‘I just needed to talk to people who knew her. Anyone who knew her. I wanted to hear things I didn’t know. Stories, things people remembered. I think I wanted to stock up on all that stuff. Memories, even if they weren’t my own, that . . . wouldn’t run out.’ He smiled. ‘Stupid, I know. Like they’d ever run out.’

  Helen told him that she’d been doing much the same thing. He waited, but she didn’t elaborate.

  ‘It’s always nice to know you’re not the only weirdo,’ he said.

  She didn’t tell him that she’d been looking for something, getting to know the man she thought she knew well enough already and finding out far more than she’d bargained for. She didn’t tell him who she’d been talking to, of course; about the conversations with Frank Linnell and Kevin Shepherd. And she didn’t tell him who she was planning to talk to later that day. She thought he might think it was twisted, somehow.

  It probably was.

  When Helen started taking more than casual glances at her watch, Deering announced that he needed to be going as well. He told her that he’d pretty much finished his report, but that there were a couple of minor things he needed to iron out with the collision investigator.

  ‘What things?’
<
br />   ‘It’s nothing. Just some procedural stuff.’

  ‘Never my strong point,’ Helen said.

  ‘You know you can call me,’ Deering said. ‘If there’s ever anything you want to talk about. I do understand. Well, now you know I do.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Even if you just need someone to shout at.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry,’ Helen said.

  Outside, on the street, she watched people walking past, drinking in the good weather on their way to join friends at barbecue parties and pubs. She watched them chat and laugh, and hated each and every one of them.

  Like Deering had said. Heightened.

  She imagined it as something rushing through her body and wondered if any of this unnatural chemistry would be passed into the child she was carrying. Fed through the cord like a drug, until he kicked his way out, red-faced and screaming his little head off.

  Javine had taken Benjamin round to a friend’s for the day, so Theo had the place to himself. It suited him. He didn’t know if his mum and Angela were at home two flights down, but the way things were, he preferred his own company.

  It was a hot day and he walked around the flat in shorts and a vest, working his way through the last of his skunk and most of the cold beer in the fridge.

  He’d put on some music, had tried to sit and listen, flicked through a paper and an old magazine, but couldn’t sit still for more than a few minutes. He turned up the volume so that he could hear it loud and clear as he moved from room to room.

  ‘Wolves and Leopards,

  Are trying to kill the sheep and the shepherds.

  Too much watch and peep,

  It’s time the wolves dem leave the sheep . . .’

  Theo didn’t know if Dennis Brown was alive or dead, but he loved his voice, the way it made him feel.

  Once the ancient music system they’d had at home had given up the ghost, he’d replaced some of his father’s old reggae albums with CDs. Handed them over to his dad at Christmas or on various birthdays, then inherited them all later on. He listened to one or another every now and then: Burning Spear, Toots and the Maytals, the Rock Steady and Tighten Up compilations; Marley, obviously.