by David Thorne
‘Connor, I am going to go now. I cannot help you.’
‘I’ll make the call today.’
‘No.’
‘Yes, Daniel.’
‘You won’t touch her.’
Blake laughs. ‘Daniel. Look at me. Look at me and wake the fuck up. I’m in prison. You think there’s anything we won’t do?’
‘She has nothing to do with this.’
‘You’ll find out who that witness is. You know what we can do.’
After reading the statement of Witness A, I have a better idea than ever. His was the last I read and was unique in that it was more than a single page long and it contained more than a simple denial of all knowledge. His interview had been transcribed, set out in impersonal black and white across five pages; but his outrage and disgust at what he had witnessed that night came through as if he was speaking out loud.
Witness A had been drinking with friends. Their names were blacked out in the transcript, all ties to his identity meticulously erased. What was clear was that Witness A had been close to the events, that he had seen everything, that he was a good and brave man, one of the rare few who refuse to allow atrocities to go unchallenged on principal, regardless of personal risk.
So how did it start?
Blake, his gang and these other lads were just talking, laughing. Taking the piss, I don’t know. Wasn’t paying attention, just knew they were there. Weird-looking bunch. There was some short guy with strange eyes.
Good-natured?
Seemed to be. You know, with that edge. Group of men, pissed, giving each other shit. Way these things can go.
Do you know what triggered it?
Can’t say. I heard a change in the voices, anger. Blake’s holding his shirt, pulling at it, saying something to him. Christ, that poor kid.
Do you know what was said?’
No. Yeah. Don’t know. Him, Blake, just rage really. Shouting. Up in the kid’s face.
You mean Karl Reece?
Yeah.
What did Reece do?
Nothing. Looked confused. Like he didn’t understand. His friends tried to calm things down, were talking to Blake and his people.
So things settled down?
Yeah.
You okay?
No.
There are people you can speak to.
How can these things happen?
Sir, I wish I could tell you.
Where do people like that come from? It was over nothing and he killed him and he liked it.
If we could—
No. Understand this. He wanted to do it and he liked it. It gave him pleasure.
Sir, you’re upset.
It gave him pleasure.
Although the transcript does not indicate it, I imagine that this last word was delivered with a bewildered, questioning force. At this stage I think it likely that Witness A was in tears, his mind replaying the moment of Karl Reece’s death and the transcendent look on Connor Blake’s face, wondering how it could be, how men like Blake could exist among us.
The interview was suspended at this point and the time code shows that it took Witness A over thirty minutes to resume.
Okay to continue?
Yes.
So. They have an argument, then things calmed down. Tell me what happened next?
Nothing. Not for a while. Some of Karl’s friends left, think there were only one or two still with him. He went to the bar – that’s where I was – and Blake said something to him and, I don’t know, maybe the kid had had one too many, gone to his head, said something back to Blake and that was it. Bang. All kicked off.
Blake attacked him?
Hit him, glassed him. I saw him stabbing at him with the glass but the kid, Karl, he didn’t have time to fight back. He was out of it from the beginning. Just taking it. The blood looked black it was that dark.
Would you like to stop?
Everybody moved back, gave them room. Blake’s crew holding back the kid’s friends. It felt like minutes, just Blake kind of working on the kid. Yeah. Working on him. No hurry.
Nobody did anything?
We did. Our group. Told him to leave it, that was enough. A girl, other side of the bar, she was screaming for him to stop. Don’t think she knew the kid. His friends just kind of moaning, ‘Leave him, please, leave him’. But mostly, just… quiet. Like we were spectators.
Okay to go on?
Just… We could have done something.
You are doing something.
No. Weren’t right. What happened. These things shouldn’t happen.
Sometimes they do.
Why?
They just do.
Blake eventually tired of what he was doing to Karl Reece and helped him up, half-carried him outside like he was supporting a fallen comrade, carrying him to safety. Nobody knew what was happening but some followed them outside as if sucked into Blake’s current of violence. There Blake carefully arranged Karl Reece so that he was on his front and his head was against the wall. He took four, five careful paces back like a footballer lining up a penalty. Karl Reece’s friends were now struggling but were held by Liam and other members of Blake’s entourage.
Witness A tells the interviewing officer that Blake had looked, he couldn’t describe it, euphoric maybe, in the second he was still before he launched himself at the back of semi-conscious Karl Reece’s neck. He grunted as he landed but that did not mask a sound that the witness could not describe but assumed it was Karl Reece’s neck snapping. Karl Reece dying.
And then?
And then Blake went to his people and they formed up and backed up like they were a pack of wolves. Nobody dared approach them and Blake was looking, making eye contact, looking into the eyes of everybody standing on the street. Absolute silence. Blake looked into my eyes and he was pleased with what he had done. You could see that. Pleased.
Anything else?
He looked at us to tell us, give us a message. Not to say anything. That was the message.
Yet here you are.
Couldn’t let it stand.
You’re very courageous.
Don’t say that.
Really.
Don’t.
We need people like you.
I did nothing and now he’s dead.
‘I could show you photographs that would make you weep,’ says Blake. Still that gaze, as if he knows what I am thinking, can read my darkest fears. What was it that he had said? That he had eaten Ryan’s brain.
I return his gaze; do not say anything.
‘I’ll give you six days,’ says Blake. ‘After that, we’ll come for her.’
He has my pen in his hand and he is writing on a piece of paper. He finishes, caps the pen, pushes paper and pen across to me.
‘Six days,’ I say.
‘You’ll call this number. With the name.’
‘I cannot get you the name.’
‘I’m trying to be patient.’
‘Even if I had a year,’ I say.
‘My father has men on his payroll, can make women wish they were dead. Or the kids she teaches.’ He taps his finger on the paper, the number written there.
‘If you touch her, I will make you pay.’
‘I’m in prison, Daniel. What can you do?’
‘There’s always a way.’
Blake sighs. ‘Still not getting it. There’s nothing you can do. We have you’ – he holds out his cuffed palms, closes his hands into fists – ‘like this.’
‘Connor—’ I say, and I am ashamed to hear my voice betray me, sound a note of entreaty.
‘I know, I know, you’re frightened, don’t know what to do, where to turn. It’s a nightmare, right? I understand.’
‘Six days. I can’t—’
‘But, Daniel, this is nothing. Nothing to what it will be. I promise you that. I absolutely fucking guarantee it. Daniel? Look at me.’
I stand up, close my briefcase. I will not stay here and listen to this; do not trust myself, how I will r
eact.
‘We take the gloves off, let the dogs off the leash, then there’s no going back.’
I cross to the door and knock on it. I do not look at Blake who is leaning back in his chair, cuffed hands behind his head. The guard opens the door and I pass him by as quickly as I can, but not before I hear Blake say, in a voice that sounds as relaxed as if he is confirming a long-standing arrangement: ‘Six days, Daniel. Call that number. Six days.’
I drive back to my house with the sun sinking through clouds full of the threat of rain, so purple they look putrid, backlit by the sun’s weak yellow, the ripe colours of a neglected wound. I park outside and there are lights on inside my home, which means Maria is there and I think back to just weeks ago when this would have been a wonderful sight. I sit in my car for some minutes, wondering how it is I am going to face her. Since Blake invaded her flat, took her photograph, I find it hard to look her in the eyes; my sense of culpability has created a tension between us that she cannot understand and which I cannot bridge.
She has dressed up for me and she kisses me in the hall, greets me with a smile that is wider than her usual smile though less certain for all that. She is so beautiful and blameless that I feel a moment of panic. What have I done to her?
‘Hi, handsome.’
‘Hey.’
‘Bad day?’
I shake my head, less in answer than to discourage questions. But Maria will not let me avoid her so easily.
‘I thought we might go out.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do something.’
‘Maybe another time.’
‘Might do you good. Us good.’
‘Another time.’ I see her smile falter and again feel that panic. I cannot treat her this way, cannot cause her pain.
‘Maria…’ I begin.
‘Have I done something?’ she says, a forced brightness to her voice.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Course not.’
‘I wonder…’ she starts but stops. ‘You just need to tell me. Hey? I’m here.’
I look into her eyes and I want so much to reach across and touch her, tell her everything, confide in the goodness and wisdom I see there. Vick, Ryan, Blake, his dreadful family – how all that has happened has been a consequence of my good intentions. How all I had ever wanted was to help an old acquaintance who had once meant something to me. Perhaps she would understand. Then I picture her running upstairs, packing a suitcase, frantically flinging in clothes, the things she leaves in the bathroom, fleeing from my life as she realises that I am a man who is surrounded by malevolence, who has caused men to hold a screwdriver to her throat as she slept. I cannot tell her anything. She would be gone in minutes.
‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Give me a break.’
‘A break,’ she says. She is on the verge of a comeback, things she wants to say about to spill out. But she catches herself and she only narrows her eyes as if she has come to some internal decision, nods slightly. ‘Whatever you say, Tarzan.’
She goes upstairs and I sit at my kitchen table, wondering why she is here, why she does not just go home to her flat. There is nothing for her here, not right now. Then I think that perhaps she loves me and is not willing to give up on me just yet, and this thought causes me to close my eyes for some moments as I realise the enormity of what I am risking.
I have to subdue an urge to upend my kitchen table, tear cupboards from the walls, cause damage that can never be undone. Six days, Blake said. What could I do in six days?
25
IT IS TOO early for Jamie’s Bar to be open but I knock on the closed smoked glass door which reads Over 25s Only anyway. There is no answer so I hammer on it with my closed fist, making it shudder in its frame and passers-by stare at me; they look away as soon as they meet my eye. I stand back and look up and see movement in one of the windows overlooking the street. I walk back to the door and hammer on it some more. At some point somebody is going to answer. I have nowhere else to go, nothing else to do but raise whoever is inside. It is day one of my six-day deadline and here, the scene of the crime, is the only place I can think of to go. I have to start somewhere.
This morning I had woken up and Maria had not been next to me and I thought that she had left me, given up on us. I had come to bed late the night before and she had been asleep, or pretended to be. We seemed to exist in separate worlds, superimposed onto one another, unable to connect. In the morning I had lain in bed and could still smell her hair conditioner on her pillow. I had got up and gone downstairs and there she had been, quietly drinking coffee at the kitchen table with her back to me. Seeing her long hair, her stillness, then her shoulders hunching as she brought her mug to her lips, made me feel grief as if she was already gone and I was only watching her ghost.
I approached her from behind and touched her shoulder. She slowly put her mug down and reached up to put her hand on mine. But she did not turn around as she would normally, did not give me her smile, bathe me in her gaze. Instead she patted my hand as if she was comforting me for some mutual regret, got up and left the kitchen. Some minutes afterwards she left my house and during those minutes all I did was stand there, in my kitchen, trying not to think of anything at all.
I see indistinct hands behind the dark glass of the door of Jamie’s Bar, hear the sound of bolts opening, the jangle of keys. The door is pulled open and a man in a faded black Jack Daniel’s t-shirt leans towards me, both hands on the frame of the door, a cigarette in his mouth. He is big, has a scar next to his right eye and his eyes are hangover pink.
‘Fuck do you want?’
‘I want to speak to whoever runs this place.’
‘Well, he ain’t here.’
‘No?’
‘No. Fucking nearly broke the door.’
‘You work here?’
The man takes a pull of his cigarette, flicks it past me into the street. ‘Fuck’s it to you?’
‘Mind if I come in?’ I walk past him and he watches me into the dark bar, says, ‘Yeah, yeah as it happens I fucking do.’
There is a woman sitting on a bar stool wearing running bottoms and a tight t-shirt which shows her cleavage and a roll of her stomach. Her hair is tied back and she looks tired. She looks at me without curiosity and drinks from a bottle of beer. Jamie’s Bar has banquettes along the wall opposite the bar and it opens out at the back where there are tables and chairs.
The man is still at the door and he calls out to my back, ‘What do you want, man?’
I stop and turn and wait for him to come to me. ‘Wanted to see the size of your toilets.’
‘You what?’
‘Were you working the night Karl Reece was killed?’
‘Louie?’ says the woman.
Louie turns to the woman. ‘Call Del.’ The sleeves of his t-shirt are cut off, showing arms that are not muscular but are big, heavy with flesh, and his shoulders are large.
‘Because the night he was killed, the whole bar was in them. Your toilets.’
The woman at the bar has picked up her mobile and called a number. She whispers into it.
‘You a copper?’ Louie says.
‘No. I work for the Blakes.’
‘Yeah?’
‘That’s what I said.’
He leans across the woman and takes a cigarette from a packet in front of her, lights it. ‘So, again – what do you want?’
‘Somebody’s talking,’ I say. The words sound strange. These are not words I should be saying. ‘A witness. Wondered if you knew anything.’
The woman turns to me now and takes a good look. I smile at her but she does not smile back. She slides off her stool and wanders behind the bar. Her running bottoms are low on her backside and I can see a tattoo fanned above her buttocks.
‘You serious?’ Louie says.
‘I don’t look it?’
Next to the bar a door opens and another man comes in, who I assume is Del. He must have been upstairs. He is overweight, his belly stretching his white t-shirt. H
is face is shapeless and full of puppy fat and he looks subnormal in some way. He is probably seven foot tall. I have never seen a more massive person. Between Louie and Del, they probably make two and a half of me, and I am big.
‘You’re not one of the Blakes,’ says Louie. It is not a question.
‘No.’
‘So who the fuck are you?’
Del is behind me and Louie in front, blocking the way to the door. The woman is behind the bar, watching the action unfold with lazy interest, chin in hand, cigarette to mouth.
‘I work for the Blakes.’
Louie laughs. ‘We are the fucking Blakes,’ he says. ‘Least, near enough. Affiliates.’
‘Who taught you that word?’ I say.
‘He’s lying,’ says Del behind me. His voice sounds wet and clumsy.
‘It speaks,’ I say.
‘You’re a copper,’ Louie says.
‘I told you. I’m working for Connor Blake.’
I hear Del move behind me and I palm the ashtray from the bar, turn and hit him with it. It breaks on his forehead but this does not seem to bother him. I back up because I know that if he gets hold of me there will be nothing I can do. Louie is standing watching, which he shouldn’t. Del might be enormous but it will need them both to take me down. Now he has lost the advantage.
I assume that Louie will expect me to retreat from the massive threat of Del, which is why he is standing waiting. Instead I walk up to Del and duck under his haymaker and hit up beneath his chin. He is so tall that some of my shot has lost its power by the time it hits his bottom jaw but I still hear a sharp enamelled crack as his teeth meet. I put my crossed forearms into his soft chest, which is the height of my head. I push him and he is so tall it is as if I am pushing up. I have momentum and he stumbles back, faster and faster until he reaches the tables and chairs at the back of the bar. He falls over them and twists and his head hits the end wall with the sound of a hammer on steak.
The woman is reaching for something under the bar, a weapon of some kind, I expect. But the bar is too small to swing anything and besides, I am on Louie before she can give it to him, landed three headshots before he can defend himself. He puts his arms up like a child in the playground, but I hit him under the ribs, once, twice, and his legs go. I stand back, take a breath, prepare to go back in.
