by Kevin Brooks
‘That’s great,’ I told her. ‘Thanks.’
She nodded. ‘You know how much I could have charged for all this?’
‘A lot, I expect.’
‘Enough to pay for my holiday twice over.’
Holiday?
‘What holiday?’ I said.
Eddi looked at me, suddenly hesitant. ‘You’re letting me go, right?’
‘Go where?’
‘Spain. I’m flying out tomorrow. Andalusia.’ She looked genuinely concerned. ‘You’re not going to stop me going, are you?’
I didn’t know the answer to that. I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to do next. I’d got what I’d come for – my new ID – but what good would it be if Eddi started shouting her mouth off as soon as I left? If Ryan found out that I had a new name – and he was bound to find out if Eddi went to the police – then there was no point in having a new name.
‘Robert?’ Eddi said.
I looked at her. ‘It’s all right. I’ll be gone by tomorrow…’
‘So I can go?’
‘Yeah.’ I smiled at her. ‘Don’t forget your passport.’
∗
I still didn’t know what I was going to do. I had no idea. I was just playing for time. Waiting to see what happened.
Looking back on it now, it might have been better if I’d done something else. Not waited. Not played for time. Maybe I should have just got up and walked out the door…
But I didn’t.
‘You can stay the night if you want,’ said Eddi.
That’s how it started – You can stay the night if you want.
‘No,’ I told her. ‘I’d better go…’
‘Where? Where are you going to go?’
‘I’ll find somewhere.’
‘You haven’t got any money.’
‘I’ve got credit cards –’
‘Christ, Robert,’ she sighed, ‘why don’t you just relax? When are you going to realize that I’m not going to do anything? I’m not going to tell anyone where you are. I’m not going to call the police. I’m not going to tell anyone anything. OK?’
I looked at her. She was lying on the settee with a glass of wine in one hand and a joint in the other. It was her third glass of wine, second joint. She was pretty whacked out.
It was one o’clock in the morning now. Sweet-smelling smoke was drifting in the air and the muffled music was still booming down below. Doomp doomp d-doomp, doomp doomp d-doomp, doomp doomp d-doomp…
Eddi smiled at me, a lopsided grin. ‘Look,’ she said softly, ‘you can’t sit there all night with a gun in your hand. It’s ridiculous. Just put it down, for God’s sake. Come on, Robert. Put the gun down, have some wine, get some sleep.’
It was tempting. And I was tempted. I didn’t want to leave. It was cold outside. And I didn’t want to sit here all night with a gun in my hand. I didn’t want any wine either, but when Eddi rolled off the settee and started pouring me a glass, I didn’t do anything to stop her.
I knew I shouldn’t have any wine. Apart from not liking it, I had to stay focused. I had to stay sharp. It was no good just sitting there, staring at Eddi’s backside as she knelt down on the floor and poured me a glass of wine… it wasn’t doing me any good. The shape of her body, the texture, the form, the matter…
Certain things, uncertain things.
‘I can’t help it,’ I heard myself mutter. ‘I’m only human.’
Eddi looked puzzled as she brought the wine over, but she was too far gone to be over-puzzled.
‘D’you say something?’ she said, passing me the wine.
‘Just talking to myself,’ I told her.
When she sat down next to me, she misbalanced slightly and leaned into me. Her hand pushed against my thigh. She giggled.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘It’s all right.’
‘I would have done it for you,’ she said quietly, still leaning into me.
‘Done what?’
‘All the ID stuff. I would have done it for you anyway. For nothing.’ She smiled at me. ‘I mean, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have taken your money if you’d had any… but you didn’t need this.’ She touched the pistol in my hand. My fingers tightened on the grip. She looked at me, still smiling, her lips moist with wine. ‘You look good,’ she said. ‘Your hair…’
She touched my hair.
Stroked it.
I felt very human.
‘Drink your wine,’ she whispered.
Something inside me tried to stop me, but I ignored it. The wine was strong and sweet, and I drank deeply, enjoying the sensation as it soaked down into my belly, then rose up into my heart like a warm balloon.
Eddi took the empty glass from my hand and placed it on the floor. She looked at me, her eyes shining blue, then she reached over and gently removed the pistol from my other hand. She carefully placed that on the floor too.
Then she smiled again.
And kissed me slowly.
And took me off to bed.
11
nunuuuuuuunuuuuunnununnunsaasaaa tah I I I juh juh juhs nee thhahh ah hta ta ta mburra borrofyourfl at at at fuwhile fcka ah ah couplewees eeks na hn na no jus borrow it I just need to nkborrow it. cantellyou. no. no. no. pa you pay you. fi thousand th tht yes. five thousand, two weeks so I live there. yes yes
A voice.
No I cant tell you. yes yes Yes Issre re really important
Whiteness. Sweet wine.
Memories of a voice.
Lie down, Robert. Take off your clothes…
Sheets. White fog. The taste of lipstick and wine. What is this? My head hurts. I’m tired. I’m lying on my back with my eyes closed. A white sheet covers my body. Beneath the sheet I’m naked.
Words…
Here, let me help you… Christ, what’s that?
Uh…?
What happened to you? Your stomach, your arm… you’re covered in scars.
Scars…
I can’t remember.
I can’t move.
White fog…
Sex fog.
Sounds.
Doomp doomp d-doomp.
Swimming in white.
Black white black…
Whiteness whirling around and around, sucking me down into terrible places…
Everything’s black.
White black white.
It’s all the same.
What is this?
Where am I?
Doomp doomp d-doomp.
I’m drunk… but I’m not drunk. I’m something else. Somewhere else.
Voices. A whispered voice. In the front room. I can hear a voice.
When can you let me know? I need to know.
Telephone. Eddi. She’s talking on the phone.
Wake up.
It’s impossible.
Kill the dream.
Something inside me…
Move.
Something electric shifting inside me.
Get up.
Move.
Get up!
And then I was moving. Getting up, getting out of bed, feeling the cold night air on my naked skin. Feeling everything. I was awake now. I was moving. Across the bedroom, opening the door, into the front room.
Eddi was standing by the settee, talking on the phone. She was half-dressed in ripped jeans and a white lace bra. The pistol was on the table beside her. When she saw me, she stopped talking, put down the phone and picked up the pistol.
‘Stay where you are,’ she said, raising the gun.
Her eyes were steady.
I didn’t stay where I was. I walked towards her, naked and knowing. I knew what had happened now. She’d drugged me. Drugged the wine. And now she was trying to sell me out. I carried on walking towards her. I knew she wouldn’t shoot me.
She pulled the trigger – BANG! The gun jerked in her hand and something punched me in the arm. Something hot and hard. I staggered slightly, but it didn’t seem to hurt that much. I just carried on walki
ng.
Eddi stared at me. I could see the cold light of my face in her eyes. She was trying to level the gun again now, but she was too late. I was too close. Right in front of her. My arm shot out and I grabbed the pistol, forcing her hand down to the side. She grunted, hissed, fought like a snake.
‘Shit… bastard, fuck off…’
She wouldn’t let go of the gun.
I grabbed her wrist in both hands, gripped it tight. Twisted it, squeezed it, yanked it…
She wouldn’t let go.
Suddenly, she doubled over and bit my hand, sinking her teeth to the bone. As the pain ripped through me, I wrenched the pistol out of her hand, whipped up my arm and cracked the barrel against her head. She grunted, then sighed, and I felt her go weak. And then she just slumped to the floor.
Breathing hard, I stepped back and looked down at her. She was lying face up against the wall, her right arm twisted awkwardly under her body. There was an ugly gash on the side of her head, but it didn’t look too deep. And I could see she was still breathing. I crouched down beside her and gently pulled her arm out from under her body. Then I stood up and gazed down at her again.
Despite everything, I still thought she was beautiful. White bra, ripped jeans, blonde hair, pale skin… beautiful and pure and quiet.
I stood there for a long time, just looking at her.
Then I went into the bedroom and got dressed.
When I came back, I sat down in an armchair and examined the bullet wound in my arm. It was starting to hurt now, but it didn’t look too bad – a shallow groove in the flesh, a red-raw slice. The bullet had only clipped me. I held my arm up to my eyes and gazed at the injured flesh. Beneath a film of blood, I could see the severed ends of tiny silver filaments – dull on the outside, shiny in the middle. Like freshly cut cables. They seemed to be growing, renewing themselves. My hand, too, was healing itself. The ripped skin where Eddi had bitten me was already flaking off. Fresh white skin was forming underneath.
Rebuilding the machine.
I sat back in the armchair and waited for Eddi to wake up.
By the time she’d come round and come to her senses, it was just gone three o’clock in the morning. The thumping music had finally stopped and the flat was cold and silent. I’d fetched a glass of water for Eddi, and now she was sitting on the settee, cradling the glass in her hands… just sitting there looking at me. I was gazing back at her. The pistol was resting in my lap.
‘What?’ she said eventually. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m not going to apologize, if that’s what you want.’
I shook my head. ‘I just want to get this sorted out.’
She reached up and touched the cut on her head, wincing slightly.
‘How does it feel?’ I asked her.
‘Horrible.’ She glanced at me. ‘How does it look?’
‘You can hardly see it.’
She lit a cigarette. ‘How’s your arm?’
‘It’s all right.’ I smiled. ‘Just a flesh wound.’
She didn’t smile back. ‘What about all the rest of it?’ she said. ‘All those scars on your body. Christ…’ She shook her head at the memory. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Is that why you’re here? I mean, whatever happened… is that what this is all about? The story in the paper and everything?’
‘You should have asked me that before you drugged me.’
‘I didn’t know –’
‘You knew about it when you were on the phone. You’d seen all the scars by then. But you were still trying to get the reward money, weren’t you?’
‘No, I wasn’t –’
‘Yes, you were. I heard you… I heard you talking on the phone. I know what you were trying to do. You were trying to borrow someone’s flat so you could sell me out without the police coming round here.’
‘I wasn’t trying to borrow anyone’s flat,’ she insisted. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I was just –’
She stopped suddenly as the phone started ringing. We both turned our heads and stared at it. After about ten rings, the answerphone message kicked in – Hi, this is Eddi, leave a message. The phoned beeped and a man started talking. ‘Hey, Ed,’ the voice said, ‘it’s Lawrence. I think we got cut off earlier on. Look… I’ve been thinking about what you were saying. You know, about borrowing the flat? Well, the thing is… it’s just a bit difficult right now. I know you said it’s really important, but I’m going to have to say no. I’m really sorry, Ed… hope you don’t mind. Call me back if you want to talk about it. See you later.’
I looked at Eddi. ‘You were saying?’
She didn’t look at me, just stared at the floor.
‘What were you going to do?’ I asked her. ‘Stick me in a bin bag and drag me across London to this Lawrence’s flat?’
She shrugged. ‘I hadn’t worked that bit out yet.’
‘And what did you think I’d do when you turned me over to the police? Did you think I wouldn’t tell them anything about you?’
‘Like I said, I hadn’t really thought about it…’
‘Yeah, well… you would have been wasting your time anyway. The only reward you would have got was a bullet in the back of your head.’ I looked at her again. ‘I told you before, Eddi, these people, the ones that are after me … once they’ve got me, they’ll kill you. There’s no reward. No £50,000. It’s all a lie.’
She sat there smoking her cigarette for a while, just smoking quietly, staring at the floor. Then she took a final drag, put it out in an ashtray and slowly looked up at me. ‘How did you wake up?’ she asked me. ‘There was enough stuff in your wine to knock you out for at least three or four hours. How the hell did you wake up?’
I shook my head. ‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’
‘Try me.’
‘Why? Why should I tell you anything? You drugged me. You lied to me. You shot me, for Christ’s sake –’
‘You shot me first.’
‘I didn’t shoot you… I shot at you.’
‘Oh, right,’ she sneered, ‘and shooting at someone is all right, is it?’
I shook my head, exasperated.
Eddi stared at me. ‘Why don’t you just tell me the truth, Robert?’
‘What truth?’
‘The truth you’ve been hiding ever since you got here. I know you want to tell someone about it, I can see it all over your face. It’s driving you mad, isn’t it? You have to tell someone. And right now, I’m all you’ve got.’
I didn’t say anything for a while. I just sat there in the dead-of-night silence, thinking about things. There was a lot to think about. A lot of hard choices to make. A lot of unknowns to consider. But, in the end, it all boiled down to one simple question: what do I do with Eddi?
As I thought about it, I remembered talking to Kamal in his car. I remembered asking him what he would do if he was me.
If I were you? he’d said.
What would you do?
I think you have two choices. Either you trust me or you kill me. If I were you, I would trust me.
Why?
Because you don’t want to kill me.
I don’t want to trust you either.
It’s the better option.
Is it?
I think so.
You would.
I do.
‘Have you got a car?’ I asked Eddi.
‘What?’
‘A car… have you got a car?’
‘Yeah… I’ve got a car. Why do you want –’
‘Do you really want to know the truth about me?’
‘Yeah, but –’
‘Yes or no.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘I want to know the truth.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Get yourself dressed. We’re going for a drive.’
12
It was still dark as we drove out of London and headed up the A12 int
o Essex. The roads were quiet, the air was icy, the sky was starless and black. A pale white moon shone brightly in the distance, and as we raced along through the morning darkness, I watched it moving around us. It seemed wary, like a circling dog. One minute it was off to our right, then it would disappear for a while, and then suddenly I’d see it looming up on the horizon in front of us. If I’d been able to see the man in the moon, I probably would have thought he was following us. But I’ve never been able to see him. I’ve never been able to see anything up there – no faces, no moon dogs, no lovers’ broken hearts…
I just can’t see it.
I looked across at Eddi. She hadn’t spoken to me since we’d left the flat, and she didn’t look back at me now. She was just sitting there, driving in silence, her face cold and blank. I guessed she was still upset with me for not telling her where we were going. Or why. All I’d told her was that if she wanted to know the truth about me, she’d have to come with me and get it from someone else.
‘Why?’ she’d said.
‘Because if you get the truth from me, you won’t believe it. But if you get it from someone else… well, you probably still won’t believe it, but at least you won’t think I’m crazy.’
‘Why should I think you’re crazy?’
‘You’ll find out when we get there.’
She didn’t like the idea of driving off to an unknown place to meet an unknown person in the early hours of the morning, but she’d still gone along with it. I didn’t know why. Maybe she was just curious. Or maybe she thought there was something in it for her. Or maybe she was just scared of what I might do if she refused. Whatever the reason, I didn’t really care. If she had refused, I would have had to think of something else, and I didn’t want to think of anything else. The truth was…
Well, that was it: the truth.
That’s what this was all about – finding out the truth. Not for Eddi’s sake, but for mine. I didn’t really care if Eddi thought I was crazy or not, but I needed to know. I needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t going mad, that I wasn’t imagining all this, and the only way I could do that was by getting someone else to tell me. Someone who knew the truth.
The real truth.
I looked across at Eddi. She was wearing a little black hoodie over a loose white shirt, a fresh pair of ripped jeans, and a black felt beret, pulled down low to cover the cut on her head. Her lips were shiny with bright red lipstick.
