Acid Casuals

by Nicholas Blincoe

  ‘Let’s fire it up.’

  Yen was holding the joint in one hand, a nickel-plated pistol in the other.

  Chapter Six

  Burgess cut a line of cocaine on the desktop: ‘Do you want a share of this?’

  Junk shook his head. These Saturday evening chats were beginning to grind him down. He disliked having to sit back in this windowless basement office and listen to Burgess when he could be in his cabin in the sky, his own video nirvana. Burgess had only initiated these Saturday sessions because he relied on Junk for his dripfeed of cocaine. Burgess was careful never to hold so much as a gramme, and he didn’t want to know where it came from.

  ‘You sure I can’t tempt you?’ said Burgess again, straightening two lines with the edge of his credit card.

  ‘I’m sure. I’ve decided I’m too low-rent for cocaine,’ said Junk, wondering if he had listened to Burgess for long enough. Could he leave?

  ‘Look at them.’ Burgess was pointing at the video monitor; the camera gave an aerial shot of the club entrance. ‘What do they think they look like?’

  The queue outside the club was shuffling forward. What they looked like was: a gang of renegade athletes fallen seriously foul of the doping laws, or a pack of new age travellers who’d caught a good deal on shop-soiled XXL sportswear. Junk switched his gaze from the monitor back to Burgess and watched him trace down the white line of cocaine with a rolled note. Who first thought of doing that, noseing down into a powdery dust? Was Burgess replaying a prehistoric ritual, updating it with large denomination bank notes, but basically re-enacting an original part of native South American folklore?

  Hunched over his desk with a fifty in his nostril, navigating a channel straight from his nasal membranes to his brain, was Burgess putting roots down into an ancient civilisation, connecting himself to the shamans and ghosts of Amazonia? If it was some kind of Aztec or Inca custom, it might work better if the stuff was blasted into your nose through a blow pipe. Junk thought that if he got hold of the pipe, he could take the top clean off Burgess’s head. He watched the tears stream out of Burgess’s two eyes, watched him wipe the tip of his nose with the back of his hand and listened to him exhale:

  ‘Whoosh. Zippa-dee-fucking-doo-dah.’

  Burgess began the next line with his second nostril. Okay, I’m gone, thought Junk, and stood. Burgess vacuumed a stray speck of dust off the desktop and looked up.

  ‘Are you off? Well, right, blow their sweet little minds, eh?’ Burgess said, holding his arm up as a salute. Junk nodded, Uh huh.

  ‘Hey wait, look at this,’ Burgess called Junk back a second. ‘Is she lost?’

  Junk looked at the monitor. A dark woman, well dressed in a designer suit, was passing by the security check. She seemed to be examining the airport-style metal detector as she walked through.

  ‘What do you reckon she is, aside from being an alien element? Could she be a London journalist or something?’ asked Burgess.

  Junk said: ‘Mm-mm, maybe.’ She wasn’t a reporter. There’d been no trouble near the Gravity for months. The Manchester/Gunchester angle had flattened out over the last few months. Unless something had happened that Junk hadn’t heard about, which was always possible. Still, she wasn’t a journalist.

  Junk said, ‘You don’t know her, then?’

  ‘No. Never seen her before. I’d say she’s a journalist. Who knows, maybe we’ve won the Olympic bid and she’s come to do a feature.’ Burgess tapped out his rolled note, ready to scrape a new line together.

  ‘Later,’ said Junk, grabbing his satchel as he left. He couldn’t believe it, he was the one with the dud eye. Even dressed as a woman, he was sure he knew who it was. Either he was fucked up, or Burgess was.

  *

  Estela had skipped the queue outside the Gravity by walking in with Cozy, who seemed to know everyone. She had passed by security without causing an incident, but was taken aback by the metal detectors on the doorway. England seemed a lot more gun-wise than she remembered. Checking her coat at the cloakroom, she had moved on to a room the size of an aircraft hangar.

  She planned to stay with Cozy’s crowd. She thought it was as good a way as any to find Yen. When Cozy said that they were heading downstairs, she had followed them to a dim bar below the dance floor.

  ‘Is there a whole other floor down here?’ she asked.

  ‘No, just this bar. The rest of the basement is offices or powder rooms – restricted access,’ said Cozy.

  Cozy’s friends were a mixed group, girls and boys, a couple of them black and one who was probably Pakistani. They were mixed but fairly homogeneous, ranging from fairly strung out by teenage angst and weekend drug-taking, to totally strung out and near total lunacy.

  Estela eventually grew uncomfortable. It happened as she listened to a tiny blonde boy who believed in reincarnation. He wanted to talk about a drawing of a seventeenth-century shipwreck he once saw in a book. He said that he knew he’d been there in a past life. After seeing the picture, the whole scene had come back to him.

  ‘It explained this dream I’d been having where I’m sat in bed, listening to my dad shouting. In front of me, there’s this tunnel and I know my dad doesn’t want me to go near it. But I go anyway. I get out of bed and start walking. The tunnel’s really long and totally dark, but I know when I get to the end I’ll find a door. When I open it I just step out and splash down into a pool of warm water.’

  Estela wondered if she was the only one to be embarrassed, hearing this story. There was no way to shut the boy up.

  ‘But then I get scared, I know something bad is about to happen. Suddenly, there’s a shark. It’s so close, I can feel its muscles brushing up against me. I know I’m going to die. But this hand comes down and pulls me out of the water. It’s my dad again. He lifts me out of the water and saves me.’

  Estela did not know whether to laugh or pretend not to be listening. She decided, instead, to ask a question.

  ‘That proves you had a past life?’

  ‘Yeah, because after I saw the picture in this book, I read what was written next to it. The sailors were eaten by sharks. I was reliving the experience. Actually living it over. If my dad hadn’t intervened, I would have died.’

  Another boy was nodding: ‘It’s clear, yeah. A classic case.’

  ‘Classic,’ Estela agreed. ‘It’s lucky your father happened to be passing.’

  The blond boy looked close to tears. He didn’t hear her. Estela thought, Jesus-Maria. Keep me away from him, he’s about to go boom.

  She decided to break with Cozy’s crowd. When she caught up with Yen, it would anyway he better if she was alone with the thieving whore. Until then, she should get her bearings, also visit the bathroom and put her hosiery straight – later, perhaps find the time to bat her lashes at the cutest boy behind the bar. His eyes had looked to have a welcoming glint, when they had caught hers across the cellar. Although she suspected he might be a faggot.

  She took one look at the queue outside the little girls’ room, before thinking No Way, and marched purposefully into the boys’. Out of my way, this is a woman in a hurry.

  *

  Now she was upstairs again, she skirted around the edges of the dance floor and watched the crowds opening and folding around the solid beams of light and sonic bursts of discotic techno. She found the stairs and climbed to the balcony, looking for a panoramic grip on the excitement below.

  The dance floor was solid with luminous bodies. On the podiums that punctured the mass of dancers, figures reared above the crowd, waving high above the floor. Along the front of the stage, dancers were grandstanding to the music, throwing gestures out into the viscous mix of sweat and sound.

  The music descended to a low throb. Dry-ice was blasted into the dance floor, propelled by the giant fans attached to the underside of the balcony. Rumbling white clouds, stained by coloured lights, inflated until they filled the club. For a moment the dancers were obliterated. Then the music began to climb again and a f
igure burst through the clouds, dead centre, his arms outstretched in a crucifix, his long hair covered by a yellow sou’wester. The music reached 125 b.p.m. and the crowd let off aerosol-powered car horns, blowing whistles as they thumped their bodies. A resonant thrill of dense electricity charged the club. Estela felt it squeeze the breath right out of her body. She could use a drink.

  Off to her right was a cocktail bar; she made for it. She asked for a martini, turned from the bar, and saw Junk. He already had his eye on her. He must have been staring at her since she got to the bar. Jesus, he was a fright. She would have sworn that he had the evil eye, the kind that men believed could shrivel your balls with a glance. He had the right angle for the view: sat eye-level with her crotch now she had turned to meet him. His monocular gaze travelled up Estela’s body, across her breasts, her falling neckline and high neck, and settled around her face. Estela flatly returned his stare:

  ‘Ooh, you are ugly. You could turn Our Lady’s milk sour,’ she said.

  ‘I know you, don’t I?’ said Junk.

  ‘In your dreams,’ said Estela. ‘But nowhere else, piss-eye.’

  Junk held up his hands: ‘I wasn’t trying anything. Just: do I know you?’

  ‘You were looking me over pretty assiduously; now you don’t know if you seen me before or not?’

  Junk said, ‘I’ve seen you before. I saw you come in the club. But have I seen you before that?’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I never forget a face. I walk into walls because my depth perception is shot, but I never forget a face. You must have reminded me of someone,’ said Junk. ‘Do you want to sit?’

  Estela sat. ‘You been playing I-spy with your one little eye since the moment I walked into this place?’

  ‘I caught sight of you on a security monitor.’

  She said, ‘You’re part of security? I would have thought that you were the element that security was trying to combat. Are you a double agent?’

  ‘I’m staff,’ said Junk. He held out his hand, ‘My name’s John.’

  ‘Estela Santos.’ She took his hand.

  ‘Are you Spanish?’ Junk asked.

  ‘Brazilian.’

  ‘Is that a Brazilian name?’

  ‘No, it’s Spanish,’ admitted Estela. ‘I have mixed blood.’

  Estela drained her glass down to the olive and set it down. Junk took the hint, and stood: ‘Martini?’

  ‘Gin and French.’

  When Junk returned, Estela asked him what kind of staff he was. Creative, non-combative, he said. He had an invalidity pension and a little room above the dance floor where he could pass his days in peace.

  ‘So what do you do?’ asked Estela

  ‘You’ve seen the screens either side of the stage, above the dance floor?’ Estela nodded. ‘I put the pictures up there.’

  ‘Why are you not doing that now?’

  ‘My assistant can handle it. I’ll drop by later – when her and Yen go off and dance.’

  Estela heard the name: ‘Yen?’

  ‘Yeah, her boyfriend.’

  Estela stood, turned and she was straight out of the cocktail bar. She had passed three cabins as she walked along the balcony. Yen was in one of them. She had him.

  She pushed open the first door, a fat DJ looked up at her: ‘Yeah?’ She slammed the door shut immediately. Junk was running behind her now, calling out: ‘What’s the problem? Hey. Hey, qué pasa?’

  Estela ignored him; she passed over the two boys in the lighting room and was making for the third door. A girl was hurtling towards her, mouth open, almost pushing Estela over as she charged along the balcony. Junk only just saved Estela from falling. He was right on top of her, shouting, ‘Estela? Estela? Theresa?’

  Estela had her hand on the door; pushing it open, she saw Yen lying on the floor. His neck was shot open, his eyes open towards the ceiling, the back of his head dissolving into a mess of blood.

  Junk was at the door now: ‘Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Fuck. Fuck.’

  Estela turned away from Yen. Junk was behind her, filling the doorway. If she leapt now, he would collapse. She could knock him out of the way and be out of the club – but she didn’t believe it was her wisest move. She was stuck, she would have to stay. She was probably on video anyway: walking towards the room, walking into the room, walking somewhere in the general area, scene-of-the-crime. If she was on video, would that clear her of the killing? There was no way that time-of-death could clear her – the blood was still pumping out of the poor slut.

  There were people behind Junk now. He was attracting a crowd. She could see faces, trying to peer around him. She heard someone scream. She was trapped, no question. She turned again, away from Yen’s corpse and away from Junk. She could still hear him muttering behind her: ‘Jesus, Jesus, Fuck, Jesus.’ Too right – Jesus-fuck-Maria, she thought. She leant her hands against the editing desk and peered through the window at the dancers below. What a mess. If she kept her head, well maybe, okay perhaps, but only if she kept her head. Just so long as she could not be tied to the killing. If it was her gun, well, no one could prove it was her gun.

  Where was the gun?

  Estela turned; the door was full of faces now. Leaning, craning, peering. Junk was on his knees by the corpse. Estela saw him holding the nickel-plated Beretta with a piece of his shirt, shielding himself from the crowd as he wiped the gun clean. Then he dropped it on to the floor, into the spreading pool of blood.

  Chapter Seven

  Estela drank her coffee white with sugar; the policewoman took the order and moved smoothly off, as though she rode on castors. The hum of the fans from the microprocessors, xerox machines and printers was oddly comforting, like insects on a warm evening. She knew that, outside the door, the line of people to be interviewed stretched along the length of two corridors. She was special, though; she had been the first person on the scene and she was being waited upon separately. Along with Junk, who was already being interviewed in a closed room.

  Estela had already passed through a preliminary interview. She had filled out forms, she had produced her passport and answered questions on her stay in England. She had briefly recounted the story of how she found Yen’s body. She had been walking along the back of the balcony, a door was flung open, someone – a youth – had rushed past her. Through the open door she saw a body, and she saw the blood. No, she did not recognise the youth who had pushed past her. No, she did not know the dead boy. That was all she knew. Yes, she was happy to wait and answer further questions. Yes, she understood they were very busy. Yes, three sugars, please.

  And now Junk was alone in an interview room. She trusted him, to an extent. She believed her chances to be good, for the moment. The truth would not come out immediately. While Estela and Junk had waited together for the police, three hours ago now, she had made him understand her version of events.

  ‘Listen, John. I don’ know Yen and I wasn’t looking for him. I saw his body by chance, only because I was passing when that girl pushed past me. That is my story; if you have a different version then I will recall other details: like seeing you wipe the gun.’

  Junk had seemed to weigh the proposition, then had said: ‘Forget it was a girl you saw. A figure rushed past you. All right?’

  That was fine, then. What did it matter, anyway, boy/girl – it wasn’t as though gender was set in stone. She sipped at her coffee and watched while the two detectives strode towards her along a blue-white corridor.

  ‘Miss Santos, if we could have a word now,’ they said, or one of them said – the other tacked a ‘thank you’ on to the end.

  Estela followed them into a square room, with a cheap formica desk at the centre. They resumed their questions, consulting sheets of typed papers. Estela could see her name written across the top of one.

  ‘You are visiting England on business … You represent a Brazilian record company specialising in Latin American music in general … You will be attending the Manchester Fe
stival of World Music Dance Drama.’

  Estela nodded between each sentence, making an ‘mm-mm’ sound to emphasise her acquiescence on the tape. The detective continued: ‘Your current address is 5c Palatine Court, Withington … You are renting the flat off a Mr Mark Whittam who is currently on holiday in New York … His flat was advertised in an English magazine, you do not know Mr Whittam personally … Your accommodation was arranged through the offices of your company in Brazil … I’m sorry, through an English record company that’s involved in a joint venture with your own company.’

  ‘That is right, officer.’ That was her story.

  ‘Your visa is in order,’ said one of the detectives. Estela could not tell whether this was a question or a statement. She remained silent and they did not ask her to speak up.

  ‘You found the body of John Caxton at eleven thirty p.m.,’ the detectives continued, their heads turned down to the A4 sheets that lay on the desk. Estela began to realise she could not tell one from the other. The bland bureaucracy of the English police was beginning to hypnotise her.

  ‘You found the body of John Caxton at eleven thirty p.m.’

  Estela said, ‘I did not check the time. Nor do I know the name of the poor boy that I found, when I found him.’

  ‘Thank you,’ one of the detectives looked up at her. Estela sat, she stared at the detective before realising that her interview had ended, her evidence assimilated.

  ‘Thank you,’ the detective repeated, holding a pen out to her. The other detective swivelled a sheet of paper around on the desktop so that its foot rested by Estela’s hand. She took the pen and signed her name.

  As she left, a detective told her they would probably call on her again at her Withington address – she had no plans to leave? Estela assured them that she had not. She was to remain in Manchester for another two weeks. She wondered, privately, whether she should not run now. While her story and her cover remained plausible.