Something You Are Page 6

  There was a silence that I waited for him to break. A mental image of him having a moral meltdown and sprinting from the kitchen to turn himself in prompted me to call, ‘Still with me, Mackie?’

  Silence.

  ‘Don’t mess with me, fella.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  The acknowledgement allowed me to relax. I looked around at the stained sheets and the man’s head, mouth still gaping against the plastic, lolling back from an armless torso like a broken deckchair. I was glad Mackie was in the kitchen; I didn’t need to see myself through someone else’s eyes right now.

  ‘We worked together a bit,’ Mackie said from the kitchen. ‘If it’s just blow-jobs and stuff, that’s not even like being properly… you know…’

  ‘Gay?’

  ‘Shh! Are you fucking crazy?’

  I snorted. ‘You live in a detached house, calm down.’

  ‘Well, it’s not the same.’

  ‘Blow-jobs and stuff, with a guy, that is gay. Or bi-curious, whatever…’

  ‘Bi-curious! You a fucking issue of Cosmopolitan?’

  ‘You are a fucking issue. Oh look, I’m in here, right now, cleaning up one of your issues!’ I picked up the saw again. ‘You’re gonna stay here while I take the car out, all right? Did anyone else know he was here?’

  ‘No, how stupid do you think I am?’

  The question hung in the air for a while. I got back on to my knees and tried, once again, to ignore the smell.

  There was a sniff from the kitchen, a choke, a sigh caught in his throat. The noises weighed heavily on the silence and I coughed, hoping to disperse the atmosphere.

  There was a tattoo on the man’s forearm. Of what, I couldn’t work out, but I didn’t want to know any more.

  ‘Can you stick the radio on in there?’ I called.

  As the house was abruptly invaded by Blondie’s ‘Call Me’, it occurred to me that Jenny Hillier had lied.

  7

  Eleven in the morning.

  No sleep.

  I dashed some cold water on my face from the kitchen tap and dialled Jenny Hillier’s number. I had only left Mackie’s an hour ago, drained and dressed in a new set of clothes from the boot of my car.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Is this Jenny?’

  ‘Yeah, who’s this?’

  I took a breath. ‘Hey, my name’s Nic Caruana. You don’t know me but I got your number off Emma’s mum, Clare.’

  There was a pause as she registered what I had said.

  ‘Oh, OK, what’s this about?’

  ‘Emma’s dad, Pat, has asked me to help find out what happened to Emma and apparently you were going to meet her that day, is that right?’

  She sounded wary. ‘So you’re the police?’

  ‘No, I’m not the police, I’m kind of a private investigator. I’d just like to ask you some questions about what happened.’

  ‘I didn’t see her.’ This time there was a hint of panic.

  I softened my voice. ‘I know you didn’t, I know. I just need to get all the details so I can help Pat Dyer. You know the police aren’t really very forthcoming with their findings so I need to do everything from scratch.’

  I guessed that as a middle-class teenager she was going to be fashionably anti-establishment.

  ‘Well… if it’ll help, I can’t see any problem.’

  I walked into the living room and picked up the drawing of Emma. ‘Are you free today?’

  There was another pause, loaded with suspicion.

  ‘You can meet me anywhere that’s convenient for you,’ I said, folding the picture into quarters. ‘A café? Bar? Wherever you want.’

  She seemed reassured at the mention of a public meeting place and thought it over for a few seconds.

  ‘Well, I’m out in Leicester Square later with some friends so… how about opposite the Häagen-Dazs place, you know that? I’m gonna be a couple of hours and I’ve got to be home by five… My mum, you know, since the… thing.’

  ‘Sure, sure, that’s fine. I can be there round four?’

  ‘Yeah, that should be OK.’

  I put the picture in my bag. ‘That’s great. I’ll be wearing a black jacket over a red shirt, so you can recognize me.’

  ‘Right, OK.’

  ‘Thanks, Jenny, you’re being a great help.’

  I put the mobile down and inspected my hands, dry and cracked with chemicals. It crossed my mind to call Edie Franco but I decided against it. Even though it felt like neglecting my other job, I didn’t want anything more to think about.

  I stood shivering in Leicester Square for ten minutes watching the crowds. A group of Hare Krishna monks passed me, in pale robes. I’d seen them many times before and they always looked so content. It must be nice to devote your life to something other than your own pointless survival, relieve yourself of the weight of self-doubt and life’s big questions.

  ‘Er, Mr…?’

  I turned and found myself looking at a young girl dressed in a denim skirt and footless tights. Her hands were in the pockets of her coat, probably around a rape alarm of some kind.

  ‘Yeah, hi, Jenny.’ I smiled. ‘I’m Nic. Do you want to walk?’

  I indicated my head and we began walking in the dying light.

  ‘So you’re a private detective, right?’ Jenny looked me up and down with all the bravado of youth. ‘I thought you’d be taller.’

  ‘Yeah well, we don’t all wear trench coats either.’

  ‘And you’re not working with the police?’

  ‘No, I don’t like to. I don’t really trust them, to be honest,’ I said with a roll of the eyes. ‘Neither does Pat, that’s why he hired me.’

  She nodded. ‘OK, so what do you want to know?’

  ‘How long did you wait for Emma before leaving?’

  ‘Um, probably about twenty minutes.’

  ‘Did you try calling her?’

  ‘Yeah, but I couldn’t get through.’

  ‘Switched off?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I looked ahead again. Everything was lies or silence.

  Jenny seemed to sense the change in mood and glanced at me. ‘What?’

  I stopped and met her eyes. ‘Look, I don’t want to scare you, but I know that’s not true.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She became defensive too quickly, far too quickly. ‘What, are you saying I’m lying?’

  I tried not to sound too confrontational but I was tiring of her front. ‘Yes, but that doesn’t bother me, Jenny, it really doesn’t. I’m not the police. I’m not going to tell your parents or shop you for obstruction of justice. I just want to know what you’re not telling everyone.’

  She folded her arms. ‘How do you even know if I’m lying or not?’

  ‘Her mobile wasn’t off. Her parents called it about ten times and it was on. You didn’t try to phone her or you would have known that.’

  Her eyes widened and for a second I was frightened she was going to run.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said, dropping the act. ‘You wouldn’t even have time to shout for help.’

  I could almost see the cogs behind her eyes whirring as she tried to think of a get-out. She started to back away and there were too many people. If the stupid brat ran she would vanish.

  ‘No,’ I said, taking her arm and jerking her forwards. ‘Look, I don’t give a shit about you, this isn’t about you, it’s about Emma. If you tell the truth now you’ll never see me again. If you don’t, you’re going to wish you’d talked to the police when you had the chance.’

  She was shaking. ‘I’ll… I’ll scream…’

  I sneered, ‘You think I haven’t heard that before?’

  ‘Please… this guy…’

  ‘Who?’ I tightened my grip on her arm, backing her to the edge of the walkway. I was close; I could see it in her expression. ‘Emma’s new boyfriend?’

  ‘He’ll kill me…’

  ‘He’ll be the least of your problems if you don’
t.’

  ‘Oh God… OK…’ She put a hand over her eyes, trying to twist her way out of my grasp. ‘OK, his name is… it’s Kyle, Kyle Browning.’

  Who is K?

  ‘Kyle Browning?’ I nodded, prompting her to elaborate.

  ‘He was… he was some guy Emma was seeing, and she didn’t want her parents to know so she told them she was meeting me instead. Oh shit…’ Her lip trembled. ‘Let me go… please, please…’

  ‘In a minute. Why are you scared of him?’

  ‘He was just dodgy. Emma knew it, which was why she never told her parents. She was meeting him somewhere near Peckham and she had me cover for her. He was into drugs and all sorts… he was just really bad news.’

  I let her go and looked left and right in the semi-darkness and glaring neon lights.

  ‘Do you have money for a taxi home?’ I asked.

  She started crying. No one gave us a second glance.

  I got out my wallet and handed over thirty pounds. ‘Look, get a taxi, OK?’

  Her fingers closed around the money but she couldn’t look at me.

  ‘I’m really sorry about Emma,’ I added.

  ‘Right… yeah.’

  She looked her age, I thought. Emma hadn’t.

  As I got into my car I saw Jenny hailing a taxi further on down the road. I watched her until the vehicle had disappeared from sight. It was nice to know that someone’s daughter was getting home safely.

  When I let myself in there were suitcases and a pair of black Dr Martens in the hall.

  I smiled and turned into the living room. The record player was on for the first time in weeks and Mark was sprawled across the sofa. He looked like Sid Vicious without the hard edges, with green eyes and an unnervingly symmetrical face.

  I thought he was asleep but he opened his eyes. ‘’Sup?’

  ‘Yo, homedawg.’ I smiled. ‘All these holidays and you never tan.’

  ‘I work out of the sun.’ He showed his canines and sat up.

  ‘How did it go?’ I walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. ‘Did it go OK?’

  ‘No scars worth mentioning.’ He stood up and stretched, six feet tall and spider-like in skinny jeans and leather. ‘It was mostly talk. Some intimidation, nothing heavier than that. What about you?’

  ‘You know about Pat Dyer’s daughter?’

  ‘Only from your texts and stuff.’

  ‘He’s paying me to find the guys that did it.’

  ‘I always thought he needs a slap.’

  ‘You knows it!’ I snorted. ‘Have to give him the benefit of the doubt though. She was his only daughter and if you could have seen what those guys did to her… It’s horrible. Shame his wife had to see it.’

  ‘Clare, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, Clare.’ Her name felt different on my tongue than others.

  ‘I remember her vaguely. Very beautiful.’ He frowned. ‘Good at her job. You know she’s a model? And a dance teacher.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Stunning woman…unbelievable presence.’ His eyes lingered like a caress. ‘I missed you.’

  ‘I missed you too.’ I rolled my eyes. ‘I wasn’t the only one. Every time I came home there was another message from that Calvin Klein model guy… I can’t remember his name.’

  ‘Lance? I must catch up with him. He was… energetic.’

  ‘I know. I was trying to sleep next door, remember?’

  He spread his hands with a coy smile.

  I noticed the dried blood beneath two of his fingernails and inclined my head.

  ‘Back at work already?’

  Mark followed my gaze to his hand and inspected it, scraping away the stains with his thumbnail. His fingers were decorated with tattoos, most of them Russian. There were many more hidden beneath the shirt and I noticed a new one nearly every time he returned from abroad.

  ‘Aha, yes… Property developer in the first-class lounge. He flipped the finger to one of our waitresses.’ He grinned. ‘I may have caught up with him in the bathroom after we landed.’

  I shook my head. ‘So he’ll be nicer next time?’

  ‘Well, sans finger, I imagine so.’ He chuckled to himself.

  ‘God, you can’t help yourself, can you? Poor bugger. What did you do with it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you mean, what?’ I snorted. ‘The finger!’

  ‘Oh.’ He looked confused. ‘You know, I can’t remember, I had quite a few Bloody Marys. Maybe I… No, I think I must have left it in the bathroom.’

  He had never done his job for the money, not like me. He did it because he enjoyed it. He knew that his talent was for inflicting pain and taking life the same way that other people discovered that their calling was in music or sport.

  ‘I was actually going to call you today for a favour,’ I said, as Mark inspected his fingernails for forensic.

  ‘Elaborate?’

  ‘I thought you might be able to track down where this guy lives?’

  He leant back against the worktop and pulled himself up, cross-legged on the granite. ‘Depends how dodgy. Name?’

  ‘Kyle Browning. I wouldn’t usually ask you for something so small but I don’t have the time to exhaust all the other sources before I pull in the big guns. I need to find this guy quickly.’

  ‘And I’m your big gun, am I? Honoured.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what you are,’ I said, smirking. ‘But have you heard of him, Kyle Browning?’

  ‘No, on the scale of things he’s obviously not so dodgy that I know of him. He probably works for someone more prominent.’

  ‘You think you could find out quickly?’

  ‘For you I’ll find out by tomorrow at the very latest. I’ll make a few calls and then, who knows? I… In a bag, I left it on the conveyor belt!’ He clapped a hand to the side of his head, beaming. ‘At baggage claim, that’s it. Watching it go round and round in an old camera case…’

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying not to laugh.

  ‘Ah, come on, let’s go out,’ he said, jumping down. ‘My body clock needs fucking up.’

  Camden was crowded, rows of insects running from one club to the next across the broken paving slabs covered in spit and pools of grey gum. That’s all most people amounted to, really. They lived, procreated and died without disturbing the air.

  I was on my fourth shot of absinthe and Mark was dancing to Joy Division with some guy I recognized from a billboard. Maybe the same guy as last time, I wasn’t sure.

  ‘… There were these black stilettos. Plastic bag and these fucking stilettos!’

  ‘Can only hope I’m having that much fun when I go,’ Mark had said.

  It was at times like these that I felt at my most omniscient. No one in here knew who I was or that I could kill them if I was paid to. There was a blade concealed in my sleeve at all times, that could puncture clothing and organs in seconds without a cry.

  The guy Mark was dancing with would never know that Mark would enjoy his screams just as much as he appeared to enjoy his laughter.

  ‘She has loads of scars on her wrists, you know, like loads.’

  ‘You know that releases endorphins too?’

  ‘So fucking bourgeois…’

  ‘Hey, you can never be too happy.’

  There was a guy, a skinhead, watching Mark. He caught Mark’s eye and held his girlfriend in front of him like a shield, probably to disguise the hard-on that Mark’s lascivious gaze was giving him.

  I smiled to myself.

  I wondered what Clare was doing.

  The night disappeared with the next absinthe. I blinked and the club was replaced by my front door. Hours had been lost inside that shot glass. Mark was laughing at something with an arm around my shoulders, unsteady on his feet. He had never been able to hold his drink. No fat on him.

  ‘Going round and round the conveyor belt, in a fucking camera case… Can you fucking imagine?’

  I hoisted him over the threshold
and manoeuvred him to the sofa, finding it difficult to stay upright.

  ‘I’m not drunk, I’m just gonna… lie here for a minute.’

  The room turned on its side as I collapsed on to the sofa. Mark’s head was resting on my knee as he started singing something out of tune. He was still laughing.

  We were both laughing but I couldn’t remember why.

  I was tired suddenly.

  I wondered what Clare was doing.

  I thought about asking Mark more about her, but he had fallen asleep with smudges of eyeliner under his eyes.

  8

  An address in my pocket and a cigarette between my lips.

  Driving through Peckham.

  Reaching Greenwich, hung-over as fuck.

  Rain pummelled the windscreen from white cloud as I parked at the bottom of Shooters Hill. I walked up to a small detached house with my collar up and head down, numb with paracetamol.

  I had an address, NI number and a brief description that painted Kyle Browning as a small-time coke dealer. I had suspected for years that one of Mark’s sources was a computer hacker of some kind, able to find addresses, phone numbers, vehicles and even medical records. He had never been willing to discuss it, which was fair enough.

  There was a footmark in the centre of the door and the wood around the lock was splintered. I kicked some empty bottles off the step and rang the bell. After a few seconds I knocked and the door opened, revealing a small skinny boy who looked as though he had been through a tropical storm.

  ‘’Lo?’

  ‘Kyle around?’

  It seemed to take a while for the meaning of the two words to register in his mind.

  ‘… Kyle?’

  ‘Yeah, Kyle, is he in?’

  A shrug. ‘Guess so.’

  The boy jerked his head and staggered away inside, away from the light.

  I followed him and shut the door. Through the gloom I could make out young bodies strewn around the hallway and living room in varying states of consciousness. Brittle plastic crunched under my shoes and I looked down to see the fragments of a syringe.

  Sweat, piss and vomit hung in the air with the smoke.