The Debt

by Roberta Kray

  I pause again. This time it’s as much for my benefit as hers. I’m still thinking on my feet, unprepared for this emergency and cursing myself; I should have had a contingency plan, a fallback position, but what I actually have is bloody fuck all. There’s no one I trust enough to ring and ask for help. What else should I tell her to do?

  Melanie waits, still sipping the brandy like an obedient patient. I want to be able to take care of her, to give her protection, but all I can offer are these lousy bits of advice. Why the hell did I ever let her get involved? Dixie’s baby, his treasure, his pride and joy. If he’s looking down on me now it must be with stone cold hatred.

  The words, when I finally manage to utter them, feel like the final betrayal. ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says gently. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort something out. I’ll go up north. I’ve got friends, good ones.’

  Which makes her ten thousand times richer than me and also makes me feel ten thousand times more useless. I pour myself a double measure and sit down. ‘People you can trust?’

  ‘Hey, I’m not your responsibility,’ she replies, lifting her head. She sounds a little stronger now, not quite so frightened. ‘What do you think? That I can’t take care of myself?’

  But it’s as much bravado as anything else. I put my head in my hands and stare at the floor. ‘Of course not.’ Her words make me want to weep. We may have walked the same road together, talking, planning, even laughing about the revenge we intended to wreak – but now it’s not so sweet. Now it’s gone as sour as sour can be. I’ve let her down, let Dixie down. I’ve fucked up good and proper.

  ‘Ring a cab,’ I say, glancing at my watch. And when she doesn’t move, doesn’t respond, I urge: ‘Come on!’ I’ve still got one ear tuned to the outside world, to the open window, to the possible sound of a car pulling in across the gravel. I don’t think Carl will return in a hurry but there’s no point taking any chances.

  She picks up on my anxiety, her voice rising: ‘You think he might come back?’

  I quickly shake my head. ‘No. No, not for a while.’ I’m pretty sure where he’s gone, to the same place he’ll always run – straight to his mother. Crying on her shoulder like a pathetic adolescent. And neither of them will head back here before they have to. Not until they’ve talked it out and carefully rearranged the truth. They’ll give me a wide berth, a few hours yet to recover from my temper.

  Mel rises slowly to her feet. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Make the call,’ I insist. ‘I won’t be far behind. A few days – tonight. I don’t know yet. Soon. I’ll ring you soon, I promise.’

  She looks at me searchingly, hesitates, and then reaches for her phone. She dials and waits. The exchange is over in a moment.

  ‘How long?’ I ask.

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘Good, that’s good.’ I rub my hands impatiently along my thighs, willing time to pass quickly. The sooner she’s away from here the better. Standing up, I go to the window and stare out. Truth is that it’s easier than looking at her. Because when I do, all I see are Dixie’s blue accusing eyes gazing back. In my mind I’m having a conversation with him, although it’s not really a conversation – it’s just me saying ‘sorry’ over and over again.

  If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be around. If I hadn’t pushed Foster . . . if Dixie hadn’t tried to help me get shot of the body . . . if . . . shit, he’d never have gone to jail or got in that stupid fucking row and . . .

  I hear the chink as Melanie puts down her glass on the table by the bed. ‘Don’t go all regretful on me,’ she says, ‘you never meant it to turn out like this. Neither of us did.’

  But I didn’t have to let her get involved. When she first came to visit, I should have kept my mouth shut about Jim, about what he’d done. I should have kept my sordid little secret to myself.

  When I don’t reply she waits for a while, sighs, and then walks over and takes my elbow. ‘Johnny?’

  Now I don’t have any choice but to look at her.

  ‘Come with me,’ she pleads, ‘please.’ She squeezes my arm. ‘You’ve no reason to stay here any more. What’s the point? We can both be gone before he comes back.’

  And I can’t say I’m not tempted. In fact, for one mad glorious moment, it seems like a bloody good idea. Why not? Cut my losses and leave. Forget about it all. We could be miles away before they even noticed. We could catch a train, go up north . . .

  She tugs on my arm. ‘Johnny?’

  But it isn’t that simple. Nothing ever is. God knows what Carl and Dee will do if they come back to find me gone. Panic, for starters. No, it’s too big a risk. I have to stay here, at least for this evening. I have to talk to them; I have to find out what they’re thinking, what they’re planning to do next. I have to stop them from doing anything too reckless.

  I look at my watch. ‘You should go.’ It’s only been three minutes but it feels a lot longer. ‘It might be there, the cab, it might be waiting by the gates.’

  She loosens her fingers, reluctantly releasing me. ‘Make sure you ring. And Johnny . . . take care, okay?’ She stands on her toes and kisses my cheek.

  ‘I will,’ I murmur hoarsely, ‘I promise. You too.’ My voice sounds like it’s been dragged across sandpaper. I’m sure I should say something else, something reassuring, but what?

  The door has already opened and closed. There’s only silence left.

  She’s gone.

  I spend the next few hours in an agony of waiting. Four, five cups of coffee until I’m wired up, on edge, and my heart is pumping like some fucking steam piston. And all the time I’m wondering if I should just pack my stuff and scoot, get the hell out of here before the flashing lights arrive.

  But I don’t. First I need to know what I’m up against, whether I’ll have to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I was too angry earlier to take in all the details. I need to know what kind of chaos Carl has left behind.

  It’s almost eight before they get back. He crawls into the kitchen like a dog with its tail between its legs. Dee follows quickly behind like his aggressive owner, her eyes sharp and wild, ready for a row. And I’d give her one too if I didn’t already know that Melanie was safe, at least a hundred miles away.

  She strides across the room and glares at me. ‘So?’

  ‘So?’ I repeat.

  ‘So look at him,’ she says, leaning forward with a growl. She grabs his bruised face by the chin and turns it towards me. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? How dare you!’

  Carl squirms in her grasp.

  I shrug. ‘He deserved it. And he’s lucky he didn’t get worse. Your fucking murdering son could put me back behind bars.’

  ‘What he did,’ she snaps back shrilly, ‘was an accident. An accident. He didn’t mean . . . He was only trying to help. He only wanted to warn Tate off.’

  ‘Well, he did that all right.’

  ‘You lay one finger on him ever again and I’ll—’

  ‘You’ll what?’ I offer her a mocking smile. ‘Kill me?’

  She opens her mouth but slowly closes it again. As if everything that’s happened is finally catching up, she slumps down on a chair and stares at me. But the fight’s gone. Drained by exhaustion, her face is stricken, her eyes two dark hollows. Fumbling for a cigarette she tries to light it with a shaking hand.

  I lean forward with my own lighter. She mumbles, ‘Thanks.’

  In that moment I almost feel sorry for her. Maybe she wonders what she did to deserve two such distinguished sons, one a fraudster, the other a killer. Not the greatest tribute to her mothering skills.

  ‘It was an accident,’ she repeats softly, as though if she says it often enough it might become the truth. She raises her eyes, tearful now. ‘He didn’t mean it. You should understand that, Johnny. You of all people.’ Almost pleading, like she wants me to agree with her.

  I lift my shoulders a little, not saying yes or no. This was as ac
cidental as an axe in the head but who am I to shatter what remains of her fragile illusions? She hasn’t got much left to hold on to.

  ‘What will we do?’ she moans.

  I’m not sure if it’s a rhetorical question, if she’s asking me or herself or maybe even God, but as He’s unlikely to answer I take on the burden. ‘That depends.’ I pause to light a cigarette of my own, inhaling deeply. When I glance up, Carl’s still hovering near his mother’s shoulder. ‘For fuck’s sake. Will you sit down!’

  He flinches and slides into a chair on the other side of the table. Wisely he’s kept his trap shut but now his eyes shift uneasily. I can see the hate in them, and the contempt. He’ll never forgive me for what I did to him but then, shit, I doubt I’ll lose much sleep over it.

  ‘It depends,’ I start again, ‘on what kind of bloody stinking mess your son has left behind. Apart from a corpse, that is.’ I see a shiver but don’t pull back. There’s no room for subtlety here. ‘We need to talk about what happened last night – go over the details, everything.’ I pause. ‘Does Jim know about it?’

  She gives a tiny almost imperceptible nod.

  I wonder why he hasn’t put in an appearance but perhaps it’s not that surprising. He’s probably holed up in the club with a bottle of Scotch for company. He hasn’t got Dee’s strength. ‘Anyone else?’

  She nods again. ‘Marc.’

  Fuck. Three more people to worry about. ‘So Simone knows too.’ At this rate they may as well have taken out a full-page advertisement in the local paper.

  But she shakes her head. ‘No, not Simone. Of course not. Marc won’t tell her. No one will.’

  ‘Lucky girl. Seems she’s the last to know most things round here. Still, at least she might rest easy tonight. She’ll probably be the only one.’

  Dee throws me a suspicious glance, not sure if I’m accusing her of something. ‘It’s a family matter,’ she says, almost haughtily, as if she’s referring to who’ll inherit Aunt Maud’s china rather than a mutilated body lying on a mortuary slab.

  I force a laugh. ‘It’s that all right.’ And I offer up a silent prayer of thanks, that for all the misfortunes of my life I wasn’t born into this particular family. ‘So, shall we get on? It’s getting late.’

  Dee glances nervously at Carl. She clears her throat, twice, but when she starts to speak there’s still a croak in it. ‘Last night he came to The Palace, Eddie I mean. He came to see you.’

  I raise an enquiring eyebrow.

  ‘Carl rang him. He told him you were there, that you wanted to talk.’

  ‘What the—’

  She smartly interrupts. ‘It was my idea, Johnny, not his. I thought if we could find a way to warn him off, to get him off our backs, then . . . but it wasn’t supposed to . . . Not like this. Things got out of control.’ Dee hears the cynical hiss of my breath. She gives me an anxious glance and quickly carries on. ‘No one saw him there. I’m sure. It was late, dark, and he came round the side; he parked his car round the side.’

  ‘You can’t be sure of anything,’ I retort. ‘All it takes is one drunken punter pissing into the wind and . . .’ But there’s not much point in looking for problems when we’ve already got a bucketful. I give a dismissive wave of my hand. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We went down to the basement, to one of those rooms, you know, the ones that are usually used for storage. I got him a drink, said you wouldn’t be long.’ Dee swallows hard. ‘And then . . . I . . . I left him with . . .’

  We turn simultaneously to look at Carl. He hunches lower in his seat. Eventually, reluctantly, he raises his eyes to meet ours. ‘What?’ he asks defensively, his mouth assuming that familiar pout. He’s acting like we’re his parents, like we’re discussing some minor infraction, a football through a window or a petty theft, rather than a full-blown fucking murder.

  ‘He didn’t mean it,’ Dee insists again. ‘He only meant to frighten him.’

  And I imagine he did that all right. Poor old Eddie must have been shitting himself. He didn’t have a clue what he was walking into. He thought it was me he was coming to meet – Johnny Frank, his old associate – not some bloody psychopath. Hell, Carl gives me the shudders so God knows what he did to Tate.

  Except I do know – at least as much as Carl has told me. And I don’t need or want to hear the details again.

  Dee, perhaps of a similar mind, scrapes back her chair and stands up. ‘I need a drink.’ She stumbles to the cupboard and retrieves a bottle of gin. There’s silence while she gets three glasses and puts them on the table. She fills her own, pushes the bottle aside, and leaves us to help ourselves.

  Carl pours himself a generous measure.

  I stare at the bottle. I should leave it alone. I want a clear head, space to think, but this is all too much to take in sober. I need something to take the edge off, to numb the reality. And I’m not just talking about Eddie’s fate here, gruesome as it was, but more essentially my own. This is my fucking future in the balance.

  Dee saves me the trouble of making a decision. Leaning forward, she picks up the bottle and quarter-fills my glass. ‘Here,’ she says, sliding it across the table. For a moment her eyes meet mine but I swiftly look away. I don’t want to acknowledge what I’ve seen in them – fear and pain and desperation. I know she’s counting on the past, on history, on some long-dead sense of loyalty, to allow Carl – her son – the benefit of the doubt. She wants me to believe what she believes.

  But I can’t do that.

  I can only spare her the details. I take a drink. A large one. ‘So, what happened after—’

  Dee doesn’t let me finish. Although I was intending to skim over the grotesqueries, she presumes I mean after she left. ‘Carl tried to reason with him,’ she says. ‘He did. He really tried. But Eddie wouldn’t listen. He flipped. He went completely crazy, shouting and screaming. He said he deserved a share of the diamonds, that you owed him, that you owed him big time. What was Carl supposed to do?’ There’s a rising edge of hysteria to her tone. ‘There were people upstairs – anyone could have heard. He panicked. He hit him.’

  I nod. ‘Okay.’

  She falters, falls back in the chair and stares at me. ‘He didn’t, he didn’t mean to . . .’

  ‘I know. It’s okay.’ I try to sound calm, reassuring. It’s not actually okay at all. Far from it. Hers is a vastly different story to the one that Carl disclosed but I’m not about to challenge it. I don’t want to watch her fall apart. How her version tallies with what she saw – a man who had clearly been beaten to death – is a matter for her own conscience. I can see why she doesn’t want to face it; I find it pretty hard to think about myself. What kind of a match would Eddie have been for Carl? Older, smaller, lighter – he wouldn’t have stood a fucking chance. And there wasn’t any need for that other stuff, for the torture, for the burns, for the . . . No, he only did that for the thrill of it.

  A heavy silence falls across the room.

  ‘What about his phone?’ I ask. Practicalities are easier to deal with than emotions. I don’t understand much about this mobile phone shit but I do know that if Carl rang him it’s likely to be traceable.

  She gazes absently into the distance. ‘We got rid of it.’

  Well, that’s a start. Thank God for small mercies. Although it wasn’t the only item they conveniently got rid of – and that’s something else we’ve got to address. But maybe we should begin with the easier stuff. ‘So what about the room, your clothes, they must have been . . .’

  Dee knows what I’m about to say next and doesn’t want to hear it. Blood. There must have been blood all over the place. She reaches for her glass, for the sanctuary of alcohol. She sweeps a hand through her hair. ‘I burned all our clothes. We cleaned up. There wasn’t . . . it wasn’t that bad.’

  I sigh. You can scrub to your heart’s content and you’ll never make it truly clean. There’ll always be a stain, a mark, some indisputable spot of evidence. ‘But—’

  ‘But no one knows
he was there. They won’t come looking. Why should they?’ She grabs my arm, her nails digging into my skin.

  I glance at Carl but he refuses to look up. He’s happy to hide behind his mother’s skirts. ‘Maybe not,’ I agree. Then, thinking aloud on a less optimistic note, ‘Unless Eddie told someone. He might have done. He might have wanted his back covered.’ I feel Dee’s desperate gaze on me again. ‘But . . . well, knowing Eddie he wouldn’t want anyone to suspect what he was up to.’

  Dee nods furiously. ‘He wouldn’t, would he?’ She slowly releases her grasp on my arm and the frown on her forehead softens a little. ‘He’d keep it to himself. He wouldn’t take the chance of someone else muscling in.’

  I force a small reassuring smile. ‘Yeah, that’s probably true.’ For Dee’s sake, although it isn’t easy, I’m trying not to be too negative. I have to keep her hopeful. If she falls apart then the others will tumble like a pack of cards. But I have to move things on. Cautiously I prompt, ‘And then you . . .’

  Her lips tighten into a grimace. ‘We waited until the club closed and then we . . . we wrapped him in a blanket and got him in the back seat of his car.’

  ‘Just the two of you? Wasn’t Jim there?’

  She kind of half shakes her head. ‘He was but . . . but he came down to the basement and when he saw him, you know, he just couldn’t . . .’

  So the cowardly shit had left his wife to clear up.

  ‘And Marc had gone home. He didn’t know anything about it, not then, and I didn’t want to call him. I thought Simone might get curious.’