‘I had a couple of Venezuelans once. I tell you, they were a pair of Caracas – I saw fireworks.’
Junk nodded. Uh-huh, nice one, big lad.
‘So what could you tell the coppers, owt or nowt? I tell you, I can’t fucking believe it. We’ve spent a fortune on all this hi-tech airport-style Israeli security gear and someone sails through and blasts the throat out of some kid. You wouldn’t credit it, would you.’
Junk said, ‘I’ve no idea what happened.’
‘And what the fuck was he doing in your room? I tell you, it’s a fucking mystery, that’s all I can say. I bet the coppers are going mental,’ Bernard said.
‘I don’t know, Bernard. I don’t know how he got in my room.’
‘Of course, it’s all on video, so Burgess should be able to tell us exactly what went down.’
There would be something on a security video. Junk couldn’t lie outright to Burgess without knowing what Burgess had learnt from the tapes. The door to his room had been shut, so there would be no film of the actual shooting. Junk had been trying to remember exactly where the camera stood in relation to his room. As far as he could think, it looked down the length of the balcony. Burgess could have a picture of Theresa entering and leaving the room. In fact, that was all he could have, but that was about as bad as anything. Junk didn’t see how he could keep Theresa out of it. There was no clear way of keeping her out at all.
‘Oh yeah, it’ll all be on video,’ Junk said, keeping calm as he spoke. ‘Open and shut. Burgess has given the tapes to the police by now, I suppose.’
Bernard said, ‘Strange thing. There’s about a hundred fucking coppers in the place, and none of them thinks to ask for the video tapes. I tell you, I don’t know what we pay fucking taxes for – all the money that goes to the police, it’s a crying shame. What I’d like to see, right, is performance-related pay. They catch a villain, they get paid. Otherwise, nothing. They have to send their missus out on the streets to make up the short-fall.’ Bernard was gloating. ‘I had a copper’s wife once. She was all right.’
Junk kept quiet the rest of the way to Knutsford. As they rolled up the drive towards Burgess’s house, the pack of Dobermanns and Akitas kept pace with Bernard’s car. Junk kept his eyes ahead, trying to figure out his best strategy, any strategy. He still had no idea when they reached the door and met Burgess. He could tell Burgess was in an evil temper.
‘Junk, get your arse down here.’ Burgess turned on his heels and strode down the corridor.
There was nothing for Junk to say. He dropped his head and followed Burgess across the hallway. What now?
Burgess’s house was split-level, built in the seventies. Junk thought of it as Tracey Island, it had that style of low roof and glass exterior, all of it put together on the flat open plan Junk associated with Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlett. Walking by the indoor pool, he always expected the water to slide away and a rocket to fire through Burgess’s gently pitched roof. There was no chance of Junk seeing the pool today, unless he was tied to the bottom.
Burgess walked as far as the kitchen and stopped. Holding out his arm he pointed Junk in the direction of his office: ‘Get in there.’
Junk didn’t like walking ahead of Burgess, feeling his eyes behind him. At least Bernard seemed to have disappeared.
Burgess opened the door on to his home office. The TV inside was tuned to the video channel. Its screen glowed blue in anticipation.
‘Sit down,’ said Burgess.
Junk sat in view of the TV. From somewhere behind his head, Burgess flicked with the remote control and the tape started running. On the screen was a picture of Junk, walking through the door of the Gravity alongside Yen and Theresa. Yen was playing around, skipping to the side, laughing. Behaving the way he always did, like an idiot. Junk looked at the image of himself, watching as he nodded ‘hi’ to Billy the Bouncer and walked through the upright columns on the metal detector. What he hadn’t seen at the time, because he was ahead of Yen, was Yen skip around the outside of the metal detector. He wouldn’t have thought anything of it if he had noticed at the time; it was only Yen being funny, acting-up as he always did. But now that he knew that Yen was carrying Estela’s gun, the little skip had become weighty, significant. Did Yen know the gun was real? The prat, dancing around but already one of the walking fucking dead.
‘That’s the dead boy, isn’t it?’ said Burgess. ‘John Caxton.’
Junk looked up, surprised. He had only heard Yen’s real name once before, and that was in the police station.
‘Yeah, John Caxton.’
‘What’s he doing with you?’
Junk said, ‘I just know him. I met up with him outside.’
‘Well, he works for me,’ said Burgess. ‘And now he’s wound up shot in my club. How the fuck do you reckon that looks?’
‘He works for you?’ Junk was confused. ‘What does he do? I know everyone in that place.’
‘He doesn’t work at the Grav, he works at my travel agents, in town. He’s one of those cunts who sits in front of a VDU all day, flogging package tours to the Greek Islands.’
‘He’s got a day job?’ Junk had never thought about it, he never supposed that Yen worked. Yen was a natural slacker. Junk had assumed that he slept all day.
‘Yeah, he works for me,’ Burgess was keeping it suppressed, but he was near-boiling. ‘What I don’t figure – how is it one of my employees ends up shot inside one of my clubs? How does it look?’
Junk didn’t know. How did it look? Like the slightest of coincidences, who would care? – but Burgess clearly thought there was more to it.
‘Why was he in your room?’ asked Burgess.
‘I let him open up for me. He was just waiting until I got back from that chat I was having with you,’ said Junk. It’s all he could think to say.
‘The kid behind him,’ said Burgess as he hit Rewind. Junk saw Yen dance backwards around the security unit. ‘Who’s she?’
This was it, and Yen couldn’t lie. Everyone at the Gravity knew that Theresa was Junk’s assistant.
‘Theresa. She’s the one who introduced me to John Caxton. She helps me out, playing the videos if I have to step outside.’
‘Yeah? Well, look at this.’ Burgess crossed the room and switched the tapes. The new tape showed the balcony. This is it, thought Junk.
‘Look there,’ said Burgess. He used a biro to point at the screen.
Junk saw Theresa from a distance. The video could have been clearer, but despite the fuzzy definition and the number of other figures walking along the balcony, Junk knew it was her. He watched as she walked towards Junk’s video booth; she opened the door.
‘She stays in there for less than half a minute,’ said Burgess. ‘Look.’
Burgess put the tape on fast forward, the figures on the balcony moved around on frenetic legs, speeding through a ten-second skank. As Burgess stabbed the Play button again, Junk saw himself and Estela coming along the balcony. Estela was ahead of him, opening the doors to the DJ booth and the lighting room next to it. As Estela got to the door of the video booth, Theresa barged out, collided with Estela, then turned and fled.
‘You and the tourist weren’t the first on the scene, this Theresa girl was,’ said Burgess, tapping at the TV screen. ‘What I want, is for you to get her and bring her to me. I want to speak to her before the cops – have you got that? She talks to me, or you lose the other fucking eye.’
‘Yeah, okay.’ Junk was confused.
‘You know where to find her?’ asked Burgess.
‘Theresa?’
‘Yeah, Theresa.’
Junk nodded, uh-huh.
He didn’t know how to explain what he’d seen on the tape. All he could think was that Theresa had left the room in a panic after she had shot Yen, but returned, almost immediately. Perhaps to recheck the body. He had to ask: ‘If you have all that on the video, don’t you have the killer?’
‘That’s the beginning of the video. That camera
had only just started recording. Someone had taken the video tape for this camera out of the machine. I’d only just found out.’
That had been Junk’s fault. When he’d shown Theresa his latest tape, he had used Burgess’s security equipment. He must have forgotten to put the blank tape back into the machine. It was lucky, he supposed. All he said was: ‘Let’s see it again.’
Burgess played the first few minutes of the tape through again. There was no doubt that it was Theresa. There was no mistaking her, not if you knew her – not even if you had only seen her once before. But all the video showed was her walking into the room, waiting, and coming out again. She might have shot Yen inside those few seconds, but she would have had to be quick.
Looking at it a third time, Junk could see that Theresa’s hands were empty and all she was wearing was a too-short T-shirt and tight black trousers. There was no way she was carrying a gun at that moment. Junk risked asking: ‘What do you think happened, boss?’
‘Fucked if I know. She goes in, she must see a blood spattered corpse and so she just does one, flits.’
‘And there’s no way she would have stayed around to meet the cops,’ said Junk. He had an idea, now. He couldn’t see quite how it might help, but it would confuse the picture. It would worry Burgess for sure. ‘There’s no way she’d want to talk to the cops after Caxton was killed. It would come out about his drug dealing.’
Burgess was looking pale. ‘John Caxton is a dealer?’
‘Yeah. Your dealer. When I buy a couple of grammes for you, it’s him that I get it off. That’s why he was in my room, he was just sorting his kit out – you know, folding up some wraps so he could flog them throughout the night.’
Burgess smashed his fist into Junk’s face. Junk saw it coming, but just sat there. He took the follow-up full-on.
Burgess screamed, ‘You fucking moron. I should have you fucking killed. I should have Bernard throw you to the fucking dogs, a fucking T-bone rammed up your arse. You let a coke dealer sort out his wraps in my club. What do you think the bouncers are for, all this fucking Jew security. I’m supposed to be clean. I’m running a straight club, I’m through with fucking drug dens.’
‘I did him a favour,’ said Junk, sniffling through the blood that caked his nose. ‘He did me a favour, getting all the coke you want – you know, like you told me: good quality, none of this baby-powder shit.’
‘You arsehole. You really fucking fried your brains back in the seventies, didn’t you. The reason you get the coke is so no one finds me mating around with drug dealers,’ shouted Burgess. ‘What’s the fucking point if you bring the scum into the club?’
‘I screwed up,’ said Junk. This was it now, the line that would really shake Burgess: ‘But I can’t see it matters. You said he worked for you, so no matter where he dies, it gets linked back to you.’
Junk knew he had saved Theresa from the police. If Burgess had been so worried about being linked with a dead boy, he’d be a thousand times more anxious not to be linked with a dead drug dealer. He would make sure no one spoke to Theresa, so long as he believed Theresa could tie him into some drug scam. Perhaps make it look as though he still kept a string of dealers running out of his clubs and bars – just like the old days.
The only worry, now: Burgess might make sure Theresa never spoke to the police, or anyone else.
Chapter Ten
Estela woke, still wrapped around Theresa, hugging her inside a lemon duvet. She had to twist Theresa’s head to free her arm and look at her wristwatch. She did not like what she saw: a quarter to eleven. She was getting to be a heavy sleeper, although she could only have had three or four hours in total. She felt dull and flat, she wanted her hormone tablets and she wanted them now. Damn that slut Yen. The poor boy. Estela disentangled herself from Theresa and looked around for her handbag. She knew that she had emergency items of make-up. What she needed was her complete vanity kit, but she could never return to the apartment. She would have to make do with whatever she could find.
Theresa was deep in sleep. Estela decided that a complete interrogation could wait. First she would look around the girl’s bathroom and see what kind of skin care products she kept. Alter a glance around Theresa’s miskept home, Estela was not prepared to bet on a lavishly stocked bathroom. Theresa hardly needed full-scale cosmetic enhancement, anyway. Asleep, she was such a slight thing. Estela liked her face. The down-turned mouth made her appear both serious and shrewd. She was certainly pretty. Estela might have paid good money for those eyelashes.
The steep, narrow and dark stairs ended opposite a bathroom that was nearer to being clean than filthy. The tiny window above the lavatory was chock full of cleansers and toners, most of them wrapped in decorative wicker baskets, as though Christmas had just passed and every one of Theresa’s aunts had decided to go with soaps-and-smells. Theresa was a Catholic name. She must have a thousand aunties. Estela looked over all the little plastic bottles. They would be fine if she was making a jello salad but she was not going to put any of them on her skin: passion fruit shampoo, banana moisturiser, aubergine (or egg-plant) cleansing milk, thyme and seaweed eye balm. Estela could not guess what kind of criminally insane hippie would have supplied this poisonous goo.
A range of Clinique toners and moisturisers stood by the sink. Estela found them eventually. Within a half-hour, she had all but completed a makeshift facial and could begin to get dressed again. She decided to put a tight and wide elastic hairband across the top of her forehead, holding back her thick black hair and pulling the flesh of her face up in the surprised fox/Joan Collins style. She finished by dabbing perfume in the shadowy crescents underneath her breasts. She thanked God and Our-Lady-of-lactation that they were still beautiful. She had not even begun to lose her figure. A seventeen year old would risk damnation for breasts like hers.
Her glamour restored, she returned downstairs, detouring through the kitchen before she woke Theresa. While she fed the toaster, Estela timed the radio/cassette on the worktop to Piccadilly Radio. She guessed that she’d missed the local news. But perhaps a little music would get some signs of life out of the Theresa-shaped duvet. After spluttering through an ad for exhaust pipes, the radio surfaced with the first bars of Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’. Estela had to stop and wait for Debbie Harry’s vocals to begin. How could anyone invent a voice like that? The sullen sublime. It wasn’t until the song ended, and the DJ gave the dates, that Estela remembered the song was thirteen years old. It was a summer hit; it must have been playing somewhere the night she left Manchester. She had once had a Debbie Harry wig. It was lost on the night she was arrested. The desk sergeant had taken it and logged it in his big black book, along with her purse, stiletto shoes and her season ticket for Manchester City. She never got any of them back.
Estela put her mind back on breakfast. After a while, she went to wake Theresa, honeying the tones and velvetting the Latin cadences as she whispered ‘darling? darling?’ She would have made an excellent extra aunty.
Theresa’s eyelashes swung open on clear blue eyes. As the girl focused, Estela thought she saw semi-circular lines swivel beneath the Celtic glaze, reminding her of the telescopic sightfinder on cameras and rifles.
‘I put on the kettle, darling,’ said Estela. She stroked Theresa’s hair out of her eyes, revealing a bony porcelain forehead with a single crack running across it. Theresa had woken unhappily.
The toast was ready. Estela had found a tub of crumb-filled margarine in the fridge, but no butter. The margarine congealed in pools on the slabs of white toast that Theresa couldn’t eat. Estela wondered if she should try and persuade the girl to eat something, but didn’t bother. As they sat together, Theresa began to worry that the fire had been on too long. Estela told her not to be silly and took a ten pound note out of her purse.
‘I’ll pay. I don’ want either of us to freeze.’
Theresa took the money. She asked Estela how she had come to know Junk.
‘I once lived in Manch
ester,’ Estela told her. Estela had intended keeping the truth to a minimum, but did not know how carefully Theresa had listened to her conversation with Junk. If Junk chose, he could tell Theresa everything anyway. ‘I was born here.’
‘It doesn’t sound like it, that’s all I can say.’ Theresa had the urban nasal slur of a Manchester girl. Estela thought: north Manchester; Blackley, certainly no further from town than Crumpsall.
Estela said: ‘Was Yen your boyfriend?’
Theresa’s mouth took another down turn, but she held on to her tears: ‘No, he was a friend.’
The duvet had begun to slip off Theresa’s pale shoulders. Estela tucked it around the girl as though she had been born to play her mother. ‘Tell me, what did Yen say about me exactly?’
Theresa’s voice had a sour edge. ‘About finding a gun at your place? He said you had photographs of John Burgess and a gun. He joked that you were planning to knock him off, but there’s no other explanation. It was a real gun.’
‘A nine millimetre Beretta, it was a very good piece. Now the police have it, and I am helpless.’ Estela hoped that her lip had quivered.
‘Not as helpless as Yen.’
‘No? We can pray for him. I don’ have a prayer unless I find another gun,’ said Estela. ‘I was not intending to kill Burgess but if he finds me, then I prefer to get to him first.’
Only Theresa’s head was visible above the duvet, her little face and large Irish eyes. Could Estela really kill Burgess?
Estela said, ‘You have to understand, Burgess is mad. Not just loopy, he is mad at me because I once caused him a certain amount of emotional pain.’
Estela paused. She last saw Burgess the night she had broken out of prison. Burgess had looked in pain, certainly. He was lying on the floor, his hands over his face. As she stepped over him and walked to the door, he seemed to be crying.
‘I know Burgess and I know the way his mind works. He’s the kind who thinks too intensely. He barely sleeps, which gives him too much time to brood. He wants revenge. If I don’ kill him, I face a problem. I’d like to clear up our past misunderstandings, but John Burgess is beyond reasoning.’ Estela paused, before saying, ‘But I’m sure you know all about Burgess. You must see him at the club, and I know that Yen worked at his travel agency.’
Acid Casuals Page 6
