Like a Charm

by Karin Slaughter

  She sat alone and still for a long time, drinking brandy, whispering to Phil's cooling body, telling him what a cunt he was. She opened the boxes and saw the bracelet and put it on. It looked ridiculous on her slim wrist.

  'Fucking rubbish.'

  And then the egg. She opened it in the middle and found a note in Phil's handwriting: I love you. She screwed it up and threw it to the floor. It sucked the blood up from the ground, smothering itself in gore until it was as bloated as a happy tick. Anya clipped the egg to the bracelet and sat back, poking the body with her toe.

  'Go fuck yourself.'

  The fury ebbed away as the drink warmed her. She would have cried but she wasn't sorry or afraid. Phil had stopped bleeding and the edges of the blood had started to dry by the time she picked up the phone and called the club.

  It was nine o'clock and the punters were few and far between. The music blared insistently on the other end and she could hear the girls talking to each other. Eugene? Please to put Eugene. Thanks you, Sally.

  She shook a cigarette out of the packet and lit up, inhaling deeply, tipping her head back, closing her eyes and stroking her slim throat with her fingertips. Eugene picked up the phone and grunted hello and Anya lapsed into her own language. 'Eugene,' she whispered, 'I've done it again.'

  Suddenly he was attentive. 'By "it" do you mean what happened at home, the Johnny situation?'

  He sounded annoyed. She jackknifed slowly forwards over her knees, contracting every muscle in her face until she looked like a small, grieving child.

  'He hit me, Euge,' she keened. 'I can't . . . Euge, I can't take that. My face, it's my face.'

  Eugene turned from the bar, cupping his hand over the receiver. 'What's wrong with you? Why do you keep doing that?'

  'I got angry. He hit me. Please help.'

  He sighed, a breathy exasperated fluster in her ear. 'Anya, I can't help you.'

  'Please, Euge, please help me.'

  Eugene was a gangster born of gangsters and he had seen some hair-raising sights in his life, but those were accidents of birth and cast. Deep in his heart he was a gentleman. He used violence as a tool, for a reason, but disposing of needless bodies depressed him. It made him question the purpose and point of life.

  'No,' he said. 'You'll have to run.'

  Contemplating difficulties for herself made Anya howl with grief.

  'But Eugene, I'm your family, how can you leave me unprotected? How can you abandon me?'

  Eugene waited until she had calmed down and said, 'After Johnny, never again.'

  She heard the finality in his voice, remembered wearing the blood-soaked kimono as she sat curled up on the sofa, watching Eugene and his two friends, who knew about those things, coming out of the kitchen for smoking breaks, covered in blood and bits, avoiding her eye. She had liked that kimono. It was yellow and she suited yellow. It looked well with her black hair.

  'Anya, wherever you go, remember to call your mother. Goodbye.'

  'But Eugene—'

  But Eugene was gone.

  The International Departures lounge was chic and modern, but one small escalator ride up took Anya into Waterloo train station itself, a grey, cavernous building filled with a yellow light filtering slowly down through the dirty glass above. Disease-ridden pigeons and pedestrians intermingled, all feeding and waiting. It was nine thirty a.m. and the commuter traffic was slowing down.

  Anya perched on the coffee bar stool for a long time, watching the women come and go from the toilets across the concourse, looking for someone of her build with luggage. She had seen a couple of hopefuls, but one woman only had a briefcase with her and the other was too fat. The train was leaving in thirty minutes when she finally saw her, a perfect match; the woman was petite, had a suitcase, a red coat and matching wide-brimmed hat. She was well dressed, which pricked at Anya's vanity. The hat would be the perfect way to hide her face.

  She slipped off the stool and walked across the busy concourse, ducking past and around people. She dropped a twenty pence piece into the turnstile and followed her into the ladies toilet. The tail of the red coat swished the bottom of a cubicle door. She was hanging it up. Anya waited silently, watching for an attendant, although there didn't seem to be one, listening for other customers. The place was empty. Everyone was gathering down by the platform, waiting to get through customs before the train embarked. The toilet flushed behind the door and the end of the red coat was lifted up.

  Anya slipped into a cubicle opposite the sinks, pulling the door to. The woman walked across to the basin and turned on the water, rolling first one hand and then the other under the tap, watching her hands as she did so. Anya had her hands around her neck before she even realized she was not alone.

  The woman struggled, but not for long and not too hard. She can't have had a lot of breath in her to begin with because she was unconscious in thirty seconds and dead in two minutes. As she slumped into Anya's arms her hat fell to the side. The woman's face was covered in small scars, like healed paper cuts. They were all over her neck, rioting up her chin and cheeks, swarming into her mouth.

  Anya dragged the body backwards to the cubicle and sat it on the toilet, peeling the coat off her, taking her money and papers, shutting the door on it firmly. She stood in front of the mirror and fixed the hat on her own head. It was a little bit big but it would do. She tipped it to the side at a jaunty angle and noticed the heavy charm bracelet that she still wore. It was all wrong, too vulgar for the cashmere coat and matching luggage. As she left the toilet she let the bracelet slide out of her hand into the mop bucket, the splash barely audible, a flash of gold swallowed by the black water.

  She was waiting at passport control when it occurred to her: she did not have scars all over her face. They would know it wasn't her. Suddenly alive, she looked left and right for an escape. They were in a corridor.

  Surgery. Could she say she had had surgery and got rid of them, a skin graft, a peel? They might send her back and tell her to get another passport then. The fat man in front shuffled off and she was motioned forward. The woman found the photo and looked at her. She looked closer and handed the book back.

  'Merci, Madame.'

  She waited until she was in the departure lounge to look through her papers. She was called Helena and when she had applied for her passport five years ago, her skin was as soft and perfect as Anya's.

  FAVOUR

  John Harvey

  Kiley hadn't heard from Adrian Costain in some little time, not since one of Costain's A-list clients had ended up in an all-too-public brawl, the pictures syndicated round the world at the touch of a computer key, and Kiley, who had been hired to prevent exactly that kind of thing happening, had been lucky to get half his fee.

  'If we were paying by results,' Costain had said, 'you'd be paying me.'

  Kiley had had new cards printed. Investigations. Private and Confidential. All kinds of security work undertaken. Ex-Metropolitan Police. Telephone and fax numbers underneath. Cheaper by the hundred, the young woman in Easy Print had said, Kiley trying not to stare at the tattoo that snaked up from beneath the belt of her jeans to encircle her navel, the line of tiny silver rings that tinkled like a miniature carillon whenever she moved her head.

  Now the cards were pinned, some of them, outside newsagents' shops all up and down the Holloway Road and around; others he'd left discreetly in pubs and cafes in the vicinity; once, hopefully, beside the cash desk at the Holloway Odeon after an afternoon showing of Insomnia, Kiley not immune to Maura Tierney's charms.

  Most days, the phone didn't ring, the fax failed to ratchet into life.

  'E-mail, that's what you need, Jack,' the Greek in the corner cafe where he sometimes had breakfast assured him. 'E-mail, the net, the world wide web.'

  What Kiley needed was a new pair of shoes, a way to pay next month's rent, a little luck. Getting laid wouldn't be too bad either: it had been a while.

  He was on his way back into the flat, juggling the paper, a
pint of milk, a loaf of bread, fidgeting for the keys, when the phone started to ring.

  Too late, he pressed recall and held his breath.

  'Hello?' The voice at the other end was suave as cheap margarine.

  'Adrian?'

  'You couldn't meet me in town, I suppose? Later this morning. Coffee.'

  Kiley thought that he could.

  When he turned the corner of Old Compton Street into Frith Street, Costain was already sitting outside Bar Italia, expensively suited legs lazily crossed, Times folded open, cappuccino as yet untouched before him.

  Kiley squeezed past a pair of media types earnestly discussing first draft scripts and European funding, and took a seat at Costain's side.

  'Jack,' Costain said. 'It's been too long.' However diligently he practised his urbane, upper-class drawl there was always that tell-tale tinge of Ilford, like a hair ball at the back of his throat.

  Kiley signalled to the waitress and leaned back against the painted metal framework of the chair. Across the street, Ronnie Scott's was advertising Dianne Adams, foremost amongst its coming attractions.

  'I didn't know she was still around,' Kiley said.

  'You know her?'

  'Not really.'

  What Kiley knew were old rumours of walkouts and no-shows, a version of 'Stormy Weather' that had been used a few years back in a television commercial, an album of Gershwin songs he'd once owned but not seen in, oh, a decade or more. Not since Dianne Adams had played London last.

  'She's spent a lot of time in Europe since she left the States,' Costain was saying. 'Denmark. Holland. Still plays all the big festivals. Antibes, North Sea.'

  Kiley was beginning to think Costain's choice of venue for their meeting was down to more than a love of good coffee. 'You're representing her,' he said.

  'In the UK, yes.'

  Kiley glanced back across the street. 'How long's she at Ronnie's?'

  'Two weeks.'

  When Kiley had been a kid and little more, those early cappuccino days, a girl he'd been seeing had questioned the etiquette of eating the chocolate off the top with a spoon. He did it now, two spoonfuls before stirring in the rest, wondering, as he did so, where she might be now, if she still wore her hair in a ponytail, of the hazy green in her eyes.

  'You could clear a couple of weeks, Jack, I imagine. Nights, of course, afternoons.' Costain smiled and showed some teeth, not his but sparkling just the same. 'You know the life.'

  'Not really.'

  'Didn't you have a pal? Played trumpet, I believe?'

  'Saxophone.'

  'Ah, yes.' As if they were interchangeable, a matter of fashion, an easy either-or.

  Derek Becker had played Ronnie's once or twice, in his pomp, not headlining, but taking the support slot with his quartet, Derek on tenor and soprano, occasionally baritone, along with the usual piano, bass and drums. That was before the booze really hit him bad.

  'Adams,' Costain said, 'it would just be a matter of baby sitting, making sure she gets to the club on time, the occasional interview. You know the drill.'

  'Hardly seems necessary.'

  'She's not been in London in a good while. She'll feel more comfortable with a hand to hold, a shoulder to lean on.' Costain smiled his professional smile. 'That's metaphorically, of course.'

  They both knew he needed the money; there was little more, really, to discuss.

  'She'll be staying at Le Meridien,' Costain said. 'On Piccadilly. From Friday. You can hook up with her there.'

  The meeting was over, Costain was already glancing at his watch, checking for messages on his mobile phone.

  'All those years in Europe,' Kiley said, getting to his feet, 'no special reason she's not been back till now?'

  Costain shook his head. 'Representation, probably. Timings not quite right.' He flapped a hand vaguely at the air. 'Sometimes it's just the way these things are.'

  'A little start-up fund would be good,' Kiley said.

  Costain reached into his suit jacket for his wallet and slid out two hundred and fifty in freshly minted twenties and tens. 'Are you still seeing Kate these days?' he asked.

  Kiley wasn't sure.

  Kate Keenan was a freelance journalist with a free-ranging and often fierce column in the Independent. Kiley had met her by chance a little over a year ago and they'd been sparring with one another ever since. She'd been sparring with him. Sometimes, Kiley thought, she took him the way some women took paracetamol.

  'Only I was thinking,' Costain said, 'she and Dianne ought to get together. Dianne's a survivor, after all. Beat cancer. Saw off a couple of abusive husbands. Brought up a kid alone. She'd be perfect for one of those pieces Kate does. Profiles. You know the kind of thing.'

  'Ask her,' Kiley said.

  'I've tried,' Costain said. 'She doesn't seem to be answering my calls.'

  There had been an episode, Kiley knew, before he and Kate had met, when she had briefly fallen for Costain's slippery charm. It had been, as she liked to say, like slipping into cow shit on a rainy day.

  'Is this part of what you're paying me for?' Kiley asked.

  'Merely a favour,' Costain said, smiling. 'A small favour between friends.'

  Kiley thought he wouldn't mind an excuse to call Kate himself. 'OK,' he said, 'I'll do what I can. But I've got a favour to ask you in return.'

  The night before Dianne Adams opened in Frith Street, Costain organized a reception downstairs at the Pizza on the Park. Jazzers, journalists, publicists and hangers-on, musicians like Guy Barker and Courtney Pine, for fifteen minutes Nicole Farhi and David Hare. Canapés and champagne.

  Derek Becker was there with a quartet, playing music for schmoozing. Only it was better than that.

  Becker was a hard-faced romantic who loved the fifties recordings of Stan Getz, especially the live sessions from The Shrine with Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone; he still sent cards, birthday, Christmas and Valentine, to the woman who'd had the good sense not to marry him some twenty years before. And he liked to drink.

  A Bass man from way back, he could tolerate most beer, though he preferred it hand-pumped from the wood; in the right mood, he could appreciate a good wine; whisky, he preferred Islay single malts, Lagavulin, say, or Laphroaig. At a pinch, anything would do.

  Kiley had come across him once, sprawled along a bench on the southbound platform of the Northern Line at Leicester Square. Vomit still drying on his shirt front, face bruised, a cut splintering the bridge of his nose. Kiley had pulled him straight and used a tissue to wipe what he could from round his mouth and eyes, pushed a tenner down into his top pocket and left him there to sleep it off. Thinking about it still gave him the occasional twinge of guilt.

  That had been a good few years back, around the time Kiley had been forced to accept his brief foray into professional soccer was over: the writing on the wall, the stud marks on his shins; the ache in his muscles that never quite went away, one game to the next.

  Becker was still playing jazz whenever he could, but instead of Ronnie's, nowadays it was more likely to be the King's Head in Bexley, the Coach and Horses at Isleworth, depping on second tenor at some big band nostalgia weekend at Pontins.

  And tonight Becker was looking sharp, sharper than Kiley had seen him in years and sounding good. Adams clearly thought so. Calling for silence, she sang a couple of tunes with the band. 'Stormy Weather', of course, and an up-tempo 'Just One of Those Things'. Stepping aside to let Becker solo, she smiled at him broadly. Made a point of praising his playing. After that his eyes followed her everywhere she went.

  'She's still got it, hasn't she?' Kate said, appearing at Kiley's shoulder.

  Kiley nodded. Kate was wearing an oatmeal coloured suit that would have made most other people look like something out of storage. Her hair shone.

  'You didn't mind me calling you?' Kiley said.

  Kate shook her head. 'As long as it was only business.' Accidentally brushing his arm as she moved away.

  Later that night – that
morning – Kiley, having delivered Dianne Adams safely to her hotel, was sitting with Derek Becker in a club on the edge of Soho. Both men were drinking Scotch, Becker sipping his slowly, plenty of water in between.

  Before the reception had wound down, Adams had spoken to Costain, Costain had spoken to the management at Ronnie's and Becker had been added to the trio Adams had brought over from Copenhagen to accompany her.

  'I suppose,' Becker said, 'I've got you to thank for that.'

  Kiley shook his head. 'Thank whoever straightened you out.'

  Becker had another little taste of his Scotch. 'Let me tell you,' he said. 'A year ago, it was as bad as it gets. I was living in Walthamstow, a one-room flat. Hadn't worked in months. The last gig I'd had, a pub over in Chigwell, I hadn't even made the three steps up on to the stage. I was starting the day with a six-pack and by lunchtime it'd be cheap wine and ruby port. Except there wasn't any lunch. I hardly ate anything for weeks at a time and when I did I threw it back up. And I stank. People turned away from me on the street. My clothes stank and my skin stank. The only thing I had left, the only thing I hadn't sold or hocked was my horn and then I hocked that. Bought enough pills, a bottle of cheap Scotch and a packet of old-fashioned razor blades. Enough was more than enough.'

  He looked at Kiley and sipped his drink.

  'And then I found this.'

  Snapping open his saxophone case, Becker flipped up the lid of the small compartment in which he kept his spare reeds. Lifting out something wrapped in dark velvet, he laid it in Kiley's hand.

  'Open it.'

  Inside the folds was a bracelet, solid gold or merely plated Kiley couldn't be certain, though from the weight of it he guessed the former. Charms swayed and jingled lightly as he raised it up. A pair of dice. A key. What looked to be – an imitation this, surely? – a Fabergé egg.

  'I was shitting myself,' Becker said. 'Literally. Shit scared of what I was going to do.' He wiped his hand across his mouth before continuing. 'I'd gone down into the toilets at Waterloo station, locked myself in one of the stalls. I suppose I fell, passed out maybe. Next thing I know I'm on my hands and knees, face down in God knows what and there it was. Waiting for me to find it.'