‘Mr Quay, John Quay. Are you listening?’
‘Yeah. No. Fuck it, what is it now, officer?’ Junk switched himself back into the room.
‘Get it together, Junk.’ It was the first time DI Green had used his name.
‘Yeah?’
‘Murders get solved quickly – or they cool until there’s no longer any energy to the case. We want this solved. Everything we’ve found so far is heading off on a perv trajectory. We find a boy with his throat shot to pieces and enough oestrogen inside him to turn a bullock into a milky Friesian. We find him spread out over the floor of a club run by a suspected chocolate-stabber. Meaning Mr John Burgess. Well, it seems to indicate a pattern. Then a smart WPC with a smattering of Portuguese discovers that our central witness is a tranny and we think – whoa, hold on there, boy. I mean, the whole of Manchester might be swimming in a cesspit of its own making, as a great man once said, but this is all getting out of hand. Ms Estela Santos, which I guess is not his-stroke-her natural name, can’t be located anywhere so I get a search warrant and by ten this morning we have his-stroke-her flat turned upside down. We come up with a used johnny carefully disposed of in the kitchen fliptop, a messy business. But the doctors down in the slab room are paid to handle that kind of thing and in no time at all they identify the sperm in the said johnny as belonging to our dead boy. The circle closes.’
‘I don’t see it,’ said Junk. ‘If Yen, John Caxton, had been with this Santos – then talk to her. I can’t help, I don’t know her.’
‘But you do know John Burgess. You know him as well as anyone. And you also know this Caxton boy, or Yen as you just called him. And, as you know, this Yen worked for Burgess at his travel agents. What we’ve found out, after interviewing about half the space cadets in Manchester, is that Yen was halfway to being a moron. Still Burgess gives him a job. Not only a job, but something of a front-line job, a job carrying a whole lot of perks like cheap holidays and knock-down flights. Why? Had Burgess got some kind of special fondness for our dead boy? You tell me.
‘Then we find that this boy has some kind of sexual identity problem. He likes to sleeps with men – or men-dressed-as-women. The sordid, swinging little circle seems to join up. That’s the way it seems to me.’
Yen chanced it: ‘Do I have to listen to this?’
‘No. All you’ve got to do, if you’re fed up of listening to me and all my reminiscing and speculative theories, is start talking yourself. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if I hear another fucking ‘no comment’ then I’m going to talk. Because I tell you, Junk lad,’ DI Green leant over, stubbing his forefinger into the table, ‘I’ve barely started.’
‘You’ve been with Burgess since you were fifteen. You and Sorel were his original boys. You could say that Burgess was your mentor, your father-figure. Now another of Burgess’s protégés turns up dead. You know this Yen boy well enough to use his street name. Know him well enough to let him hang out in your own private room at the Gravity. Know him well enough to show him your videos, too, I bet.’
DI Green paused; something had come to mind.
‘Just to digress, we’ve confiscated every one of your videos that we found – both at the club and in your place in Hulme. There’s a vice team working through them, even as we speak.’
Junk took in the information, registering it like an intrusion. But he let DI Green continue.
‘To get back to the facts of our investigation – the way it seems to me, you are the one who connects Burgess with this Yen kid. Can you tell me anything that proves that you weren’t procuring another generation of boys for Burgess – now that you’ve grown ugly and Paul Sorel’s gone AWOL?’
Junk said, ‘Paul’s returned. He’s the Brazilian woman.’ He left a beat, then added, ‘Burgess asked him to come back.’
Chapter Sixteen
From his voice, you could tell Burgess was in control of things.
‘Get that telly and put it up on the desk. You don’t need to worry about the fucking aerial, we’re not here to watch the fucking telly. Just hitch up the VCR, you gormless cunt. Bernard, tell me, are you ready to twat this bastard? Because I’m about ready to kick his twatting arse down the twatting stairs. Pissing cock-sucker ponce … I said, Channel Nine. We’re going to watch a fucking video, so switch the cunt on to the video channel, cunt-breath.’
The boy finished, looking totally relieved to get out of the room and back to the bar. Theresa recognised him, but he’d got so hyped he hadn’t let on to her. John Burgess had kept him somersaulting through a solid chant of obscenities. It was hard to tell if Burgess was angry; if it was habitual or if he even knew what he was saying.
Theresa had barely spoken since fat Bernard kidnapped her. Bernard hardly broke for breath. It was two hours now since she last opened her mouth. She only wished she had run when Junk arrived with the police, but she hadn’t wanted to see them either. She hadn’t realised how little she wanted to see Burgess, not until he showed. Now she was stuck, dead centre in front of the TV. Bernard blocked the door. Burgess raged about the room, waving the VCR remote like a stun baton and looking for his tapes. When he found them, he held them up. Two VHS cassettes, unmarked and boxless. Theresa knew she had been brought here to provide a voice-over.
Now Burgess spoke: ‘You’re a friend of John Caxton, aren’t you? More than a friend – you were the first one by his side after he was shot. His own fucking Mary Magdelene.’
The tape began flickering. The tracking needed adjusting, although Theresa thought it would be stupid to offer. She wasn’t here to clarify the situation. White bars of static rolled down the screen, obscuring her ghostly image as it wandered the balcony. She watched as it edged its way back to the room where she had shot Yen. She thanked it for not betraying what she was really feeling. Then it was gone, for just the time it had taken her to search through Yen’s pockets and remove the stolen pills. She now knew they were hormones – she wasn’t sure what. Female hormone tablets, like the pill, she supposed. Yen tripping off on birth control pills, it could have been funny, watching him explain that in the infirmary. Theresa remembered looking up as she took the pills and seeing the mess of his neck wound. There was an incredible amount of blood. She had felt guilty because she had tried so hard to avoid getting the blood on herself, her hands and clothes. As though, after killing Yen, there was a further crime in picking her way around the gore.
‘Who killed him?’
Theresa didn’t answer.
‘Listen, cunt, who killed him?’
She remained still. Burgess nodded over to Bernard: ‘Do something, scare her.’
‘How?’ As though Bernard hadn’t been scaring her so far.
‘Abuse her or something, let her know what will happen if she doesn’t cooperate.’
Bernard walked over to her. Standing in front of her, he called her a cunt. Burgess groaned, saying: ‘Not like that. I’ve already called her a cunt. Don’t abuse her verbally. Give her real abuse – you know, something a woman’s scared of.’
Bernard looked over his shoulder, wanting some kind of clarification from Burgess. If he got it, Theresa didn’t know. Burgess’s head was obscured by Bernard’s bulk. Turning back to her, Bernard pulled open the front of her blouse. Not tearing the material, but holding the cloth out so he could look down on to her tits. Theresa turned her head away. She felt a gooey wad hit the side of her neck. She thought, he couldn’t have, not so quickly – she turned her head back to him involuntarily. He had spat, that was it. She felt the saliva as a wet comma on her neck, slowly extending as its tail slid down her blouse. She saw the residue of spit cling to the fleshy pink of Bernard’s lower lip. Looking had been a mistake, he had her attention now. She looked at tired eyes, set into a head the size and shape of a pedal-bin – tired eyes, maybe bored, but unrelenting. Bernard moved a hand forward, his finger dipping into the gob of spit as it slipped past her clavicle. Bernard stirred it around, and then pushed his hand palm-down on to the enlarged wetted patch
.
Theresa could smell Bernard’s spit. Sickened, she shivered. As Bernard’s hand drove down to enclose her left breast, the shivering intensified. She couldn’t stop, she was shaking.
‘Who killed Caxton?’
Theresa tried to speak, Bernard could see that she was trying. Nothing was coming out. Her tongue thickened inside her mouth. She saw Burgess’s hand go out and touch Bernard’s arm. Bernard moved to one side, leaving his hand until he finally, slowly, pulled it out from the top of her blouse. Burgess was in front of her; the shaking would not stop. ‘Okay,’ said Burgess.
Burgess punched her in the face: ‘Stopped now? Good. Once again, who killed Caxton?’
‘The other woman.’
Burgess frowned. ‘What?’, then he saw that she meant the video. She was trying to look through him to the television set. She said it again, ‘The other woman’, and Burgess spun around and peered through the tracking static.
‘That one?’ His finger on the screen.
Theresa nodded.
‘Where’s that remote-control thing, Bernie?’
Bernard pointed; it was beside the television. Burgess ran the video back and forwards again. On screen, Yen’s friend Estela was pushing down the balcony, opening every door as she came to it. The camera was behind her and the tape only gave a back view. The video reached the point directly after Theresa had removed the pills from Yen’s body. Theresa watched the TV as it showed her come hurtling back out of the room, running from Yen’s body for the second time. At the moment she barged into Estela, there was a fraction of a beat when Estela’s head was half-turned. Burgess played it through again: rewind, review and cue.
‘This woman?’ He pointed, puzzled, at Estela’s head.
‘Yes.’
On the video, Theresa’s face was the soul of horror. It could not have worked better. On the television screen, she looked as though she was scared of Estela: terrified only because she had collided with Estela.
‘Well, what’s she doing now? Going back for another look? She forgot her purse, what?’
Theresa didn’t answer. Bernard was over by the TV set now. He pushed his face so close to the screen that the picture must have disappeared for him, reconfiguring as lines of pixels. He moved his head out and forwards again, trying to focus on the moment Estela’s head turned. Burgess continued to move through the same scene, in both directions.
‘Who is she, boss?’
Burgess was shaking his head. ‘Who knows? No. No, wait a moment.
‘I did see her, before. When she walked into the club. Pass me that other tape, Bernie.’
They huddled close to the telly. Theresa hoped she was being ignored. She tried touching her face with her fingertips to test the damage from Burgess’s punch. She had hardly ever been punched before. Only once by a man, that was a teacher (ex-teacher, suspended and later sacked). What would a broken nose feel like? If the bone was flattened, surely the whole nose would push from side to side. If it was only cracked, would it still move? Touching the nose brought tears. She choked on them, but kept them silent. Bernard and Burgess were still bent towards the television set.
If her nose was fractured, would the swelling hold it in place for a time? Perhaps it would only flatten when the swelling was gone. Did that sound right? She caught herself just as a sob threatened to become audible. Bernard and Burgess were racing through a fast-forward trickle of men and women, walking through the double doors at the front of the Gravity.
‘Stop. Stop.’ Burgess was holding the remote-control himself. Ordering the video to stop while he jabbed at the little rubber button. ‘Bastard. Ah, there. Just there.’
‘That’s a good picture,’ said Bernard.
Estela stared, full-face, up towards the security camera.
‘Well, who is she?’
‘I don’t know, chief. Does she look familiar?’
‘She doesn’t look completely unfamiliar. Who is she?’ The question was thrown over his shoulder. He was looking over towards Theresa again.
‘She picked Yen up, the night before.’
‘That’s John Caxton, right. She picked him up, when? The night before he died?’
Theresa felt a stab from her nose as she nodded.
‘What was it then? A lover spurned, some kind of shit like that?’
Theresa said: ‘She bought him drinks all night. Then she took him back to her place.’
‘She some kind of paedophile? What is it?’ Burgess’s eyes were back on the screen. ‘How old would you say she is, Bernie?’
‘I don’t know? Thirty?’
‘I would have said older, what did she want with a prick like Caxton?’
Bernard said, ‘His prick?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be his fucking mind. Why did she kill him?’
Theresa guessed she was supposed to answer that one. She told him that she didn’t know.
‘He left her while she was sleeping and then came round to my place.’
‘Did he say anything?’ asked Burgess.
‘He said he saw photographs of you.’
‘At this woman’s place?’
Theresa remembered to speak, not nod: ‘Yes. She had photographs of you in a folder inside a suitcase or something. Different ones.’
Burgess thought for a moment: ‘Then she’s a journalist. Is that it? She was writing about the club for one of those style magazines?’
‘She had a gun, as well. Next to the photographs.’
Burgess couldn’t see it. Why would she have a gun?
‘What else did Caxton say?’ he asked. ‘Did he tell you what she was doing in Manchester?’
‘No.’
‘There must have been something else said besides?’
‘He said she was Colombian.’
Theresa saw Burgess whiten. She suddenly knew what ‘blanch’ meant, Burgess had totally blanched. He stopped, struck in mid-movement. Bernard was frowning, his brow crumpled as he tried to puzzle it out, staring at the frozen image on the television screen for a clue.
‘Colombian, chief?’
‘Hush.’ Burgess silenced Bernard. ‘Don’t say anything.’
‘She picked up John Caxton, though. Why would she do that? It has to be deliberate.’
Burgess said, ‘It’s got to be to do with the fucking travel agents, hasn’t it?’
‘Well, yeah. That’s what I was thinking – he works there.’
‘Then, after she’s spoken to him, and after he’s found out something about her …’
‘She shoots him,’ Bernard finished Burgess’s sentence.
Burgess was nodding vigorously: ‘Fucking Colombians. Fucking Colombian fuckers.’ After each nod.
‘What could he tell her about the travel agents?’ asked Bernard.
Burgess was fucked if he knew. ‘You tell me? Fuck all. Caxton was a fucking moron. What would he know?’
Theresa didn’t hear the rest. The sirens had started in the street below.
Chapter Seventeen
Bernard and Burgess looked out of the window. The rubberised squeals of car wheels and the wail of sirens must mean something. Bernard and Burgess had not yet worked it out.
‘What the fuck’s all that in aid of? They think they’re in a fucking cop show or something?’
‘Don’t ask me, boss, I don’t know. They’re playing top wheelies?’
Burgess shook his hand at the window, his palm facing upwards and spread as he mimed incredulity. ‘I don’t believe that. A handbrake turn on a fucking one-way street. And what’s with the sirens? They’re not going to raid the bar, are they?’
Theresa knew that the WARP hadn’t been raided in months. Whenever it had been, the police had never found any drugs beyond light eighths of dope collecting dust in different pockets or pushed into the corners of matchboxes. The police no longer cared about dope and Bernard made sure that they never found anything else.
Bernard said, ‘Let them raid it. This has got to be cleanest bar in the worl
d.’
‘Perhaps they’ve come to look for someone specific.’
‘Yeah, maybe. That’s what they were here for earlier when they arrested Junk.’
Burgess hadn’t heard anything about this.
‘Yeah, it was just about an hour before you showed. The cops ran in after John Quay and took him off.’
‘Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’
‘So they arrest him. It’s their job, they arrest people all the time. If I was them, I’d arrest Junk – pock-faced, one-eyed cunt, he looks like a villain.’
‘You didn’t think it was significant?’
‘Why should I give a fuck about John Quay?’
Theresa watched them bicker. She wondered if she could make it to the door and down the stairs while they argued at the window. They were looking down to the street again, now. Bernard was pointing, ‘Isn’t that DI Green?’ Burgess stared out of the window. ‘What do you suppose that cunt wants?’ Theresa would have made a run for it in that second, but Burgess ordered Bernard downstairs.
‘Go find out what they want.’
‘What good will that do? I’m supposed to just stand there and ask them if I can be any help?’
Burgess took Bernard by the arm, pushing the bigger man towards the door: ‘Just get down there, you cunt.’
‘Okay, okay.’
Bernard’s fat feet pounded down the stairs. Burgess went back to the window and, after a second, walked back to the door. He seemed to be unsure where to put himself. Another second, and he gave up. He reopened the door and followed Bernard down the corridor. Theresa heard him on the stairs, taking them quickly but coming to a halt around halfway. She listened as another set of feet climbed towards him and stopped as they met Burgess. More than one set of feet; there might be two pairs. She waited to hear what Burgess might say to them. When the voices came, they were not completely muffled. Burgess was asking if he could help. The voice that replied was saying: Too right, too right something, something … something.
Acid Casuals Page 11
