by Deborah Bee
‘She wouldn’t,’ Sally says. ‘Not even Kitty.’
‘Of course, she would. She’s so fucking furious about that modelling shit! I’m going to fucking kill her!’ And I stumble across all the crap on our floor, towards her front door.
‘Clare, let Mrs H handle it. Let’s just go—’
‘KITTY! KITTY, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!’ I yell.
I’m about to hammer on the door, when it drifts open and I fall into the room, catching hold of the handle to steady myself, pulling myself up, looking up . . . And there’s Kitty. Hanging where a pink fringed lampshade used to be, white plastic light flex wound around her neck, chin on chest, graduated blonde hair falling forwards, eyes glazed, bulging, skin grey, arms straight, nails chipped, slowly, slowly, slowly turning, the flex creaking, and her tiny bare feet not quite touching the fallen chair beneath them.
And a familiar voice says, ‘Hello, Coco.’
Fifty-Six
Sally
I’m not shitting you, I just heard a man’s voice, and all I can think about is running because that’s the kind of huge sodding coward I am.
My heart is thumping so hard I think it’s going to fall out and I’m still drunk from the bloomin’ Prosecco and the stairs are dark and surely someone else is going to hear him?
From the doorway of our flat all I can see is Clare, on her knees, coughing and throwing up onto the carpet of Kitty’s flat.
And then suddenly there’s the sound of heavy footsteps and a man is silhouetted in Kitty’s doorway who lurches out and grabs me by the arms, dragging me into the room.
My knees scrape against the wooden floor and I can feel the skin ripping and he kicks the door shut behind me.
Gareth.
Thick wavy hair, fake tan, model-style muscles, bluey-white teeth, enormous sense of entitlement, yellow suede slip-on shoes with no socks.
‘I’m watching you,’ he says, dropping me like a sack. ‘I know about you,’ he says, sitting back on a chair. ‘Kitty doesn’t like you,’ he says, picking up the gun that’s lying next to the chair and aiming it at Clare. He pulls out some underwear from the back pocket of his jeans, a red bra and pants and loops it over the nose of the gun.
‘Didn’t,’ I say, ‘she didn’t like me. She’s not in a fit state to like anyone now!’
Kitty is slowly, slowly spinning and the light flex is groaning under her weight and her straightened hair is wafting like she’s in a gentle breeze, even though she’s not.
‘Well observed,’ he says. ‘She didn’t like anyone much. And her whining was off the fucking scale. You’re next,’ he says, motioning upwards with his head. ‘Coco, take off the shit you’re wearing and put that on.’ He tosses the underwear with the gun.
Clare wipes the corner of her mouth on the back of her thumb.
‘Smells like you’ve been drinking, babe,’ he says. ‘You know I don’t like you drinking. Messes with your meds.’
Through Kitty’s bathroom door, I can see the airing cupboard wide open, the shelves stacked neatly against the side of the bath and the towels and sheets piled on the toilet seat. Kitty must have let him in.
The sitting room is sweating, and humming with the smell of sick, but Gareth’s shirt is ironed, pristine, powder blue without a whisper of perspiration, and he’s as calm as you like, sitting back in his chair.
‘Where’s the necklace, whore?’ he says to Clare.
She’s starting to take off her pyjama bottoms, the ones with the pink rabbits, and she stops and stares at him, one foot in one foot out.
‘The locket. Where the fuck is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says, flicking her eyes at me.
He sees her.
He misses nothing.
‘Babe,’ he says with a sigh, lovingly outlining the contours of the gun with his forefinger. ‘You have no idea how much you fucked up the whole plan by stealing that, do you? All those fucking meds you took you didn’t need to. All that planning. Plane tickets. Months of planning, babe. You fucked it up. So, the locket.’ He leans back. ‘I know you have it. You know you have it. And now it seems, she knows you have it. So, where is it? Stop fucking with my time.’
‘I don’t—’ she starts.
And I say, ‘If she says she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know.’
‘Don’t you fucking start!’ he shouts. ‘Shut up! Get on your knees and shut up,’ he yells, loud enough to be heard downstairs, I think. I hope.
I struggle on to my knees on the carpet. Clare drops her white pants to her ankles, kicks them away, then starts to put her foot into the red pants. She overbalances and takes a step towards Gareth.
‘Easy, babe, you don’t wanna hurt yourself,’ he says, getting up and yanking her arm, so she falls forwards even more. She’s a tangle of legs and pants and I can see that the burns between her legs are still angry and purple.
‘Naughty panties, making Coco fall,’ he says, settling back in his chair again, resting his arm behind his head, watching her trying to pull up the red pants. ‘And the top,’ he says.
Tears are streaking down her face.
‘Babe, you look ugly enough not crying. Stop now or I’ll give you something to cry about.’
She wipes the tears with her fingers.
‘You wanna know where you slipped up?’ I say.
‘I don’t slip up, Miss Marple,’ he says, not moving his eyes off Clare, half smiling at her bare breasts. She tries to hide herself but that makes him smile more.
‘The journal,’ I say. ‘It was pathetic. Stealing all that stuff off the Internet. So obviously not one person – one minute you’re a fucking doctor, next minute you’re an emotional wreck, next minute you’re soooo in love,’ I say.
He lurches out of the chair and smacks me so hard across the face with the gun that I land on the wooden floorboards, head first, and everything is black. I hear Clare gasp and then another sound of metal hitting skin and he’s smacked her across the face as well.
‘I heard you talk too much. Shut up,’ he hisses.
He breathes out slowly through his mouth, staring at the gun in his hands, thinking, thinking.
‘Where’s the locket, babe?’ he hisses at Clare, and he towers over me, and he wraps his hands around my throat and starts squeezing, looking at Clare. Squeezing.
I try to speak but I can’t.
I can’t breathe.
‘Where’s the locket?’ he says again to Clare, relaxing his grip.
Clare’s face is criss-crossed with the tracks of her tears.
‘It’s in my room,’ she says, haltingly, staring at me, not blinking, and if I’m supposed to have a plan, I don’t, and if I’m supposed to read her face and know her plan, I can’t. And anyway, she looks like she doesn’t have a plan either.
‘Clare . . .’ I whisper.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ he says, kicking my leg as he walks past. He pushes her out the door and motions for me to follow. In the other back pocket of his jeans is a clear plastic bottle of blue paraffin.
From the inside of our flat there’s a banging sound, like the water boiler is going nuclear or something. We all stand on the landing, outside our open front door, listening, Clare nearest the door, silently crying.
‘What the fuck is that?’ he hisses at me.
‘It’s just the hot water,’ I say. ‘It always . . .’
There’s a clank and a thud and Barney falls out of our bathroom, coughing, into the sitting room, glancing at me, gazing around at our trashed flat, pictures fallen off the walls, chairs tipped up and slashed, shards of mirror glittering.
‘Sal, girl,’ he says, smiling, when he sees me at the door, putting his hands on his hips. ‘Sorry, Sal, but I need my money. Urgent,’ he says, with a grin and a shrug. He looks better than I’ve ever seen him. Well, like he used to look before he began living on the street. His cheeks are pink instead of his eyes. ‘Tried to call you earlier,’ he says, giving me a glance, but shaking his head and laughing. ‘Looks like I
missed the party of the century.’ He’s talking fast, frenzied, like he does when he’s high. Gareth is standing in the shadows in the hall behind me, with the gun in my back.
‘The girl with the bare feet,’ he says to Clare, looking her up and down. ‘Looks like most of your clothes fell off, again.’ His eyes rest on the burns between her thighs and he almost imperceptibly winces. ‘You really do need to get your head around the concept of wearing clothes, you know. I reckon you’ll feel a lot warmer,’ he says, looking around. ‘Saves on vitamins and stuff. I need my money, Sal,’ he says, his hands shaking like they do most of the time, ‘I don’t know what game you’ve got going on here, love, but I need my money.’
‘Hey,’ says Gareth from behind me. I stiffen and I watch Clare’s shoulders tense. ‘I’m Axel, Kitty’s boyfriend. Your mates back at the squat must’ve told you about me, right?’
‘Oh, yeah, right,’ says Barney. ‘Yeah, Ryan did mention something about you. Said something about the attic. Axel, you say?’ he says, flicking his eyes at me, meeting my gaze, like he does when he’s off the drugs. ‘Are you in on the party too, Axel?’ Barney smiles.
‘Well no, not exactly,’ says Gareth, cool as a cucumber. ‘There’s been a bit of a row and Kitty can’t find her necklace and it looks like Clare and Sally here know a bit about it.’ He pushes me and Clare further into the room and kicks the door behind him.
‘Sally-Ann Parton! Turned into a common thief have you?’ says Barn, with a giggle, which is weird because he can see I’m not smiling back. ‘Must be something to do with the company you keep. Can’t wait to tell your sergeant friend. Well, it looks like someone has been trying pretty damn hard to find something in here. But look, I’m in a hurry. Can you get my money, girl?’
‘The necklace and your notes are in the curtain pole, in the bedroom,’ I say, staring in disbelief at Barney, trying to fix him with a look he’ll understand. Clare seems to wake up for the first time, and stares at me, and Gareth stares at her and Barney stares at him.
‘Tell you what,’ says Gareth to Barney, ‘you go have a look for us both, while I make sure no one disappears from here. Don’t want to upset Kitty any more than we have to, right, ladies?’
He sits down on the end of the sofa, brushing aside the socks and magazines. Clare nods mechanically.
‘You just unscrew the end. Right-hand side,’ I say, half shaking my head, thinking it’s a fine time for Barney to give his system a break, only to go half stupid, cos anyone can see this situation calls for something like a code red at the very least.
‘You’d better not be lying,’ says Gareth quietly, as Barney opens Clare’s bedroom door.
Her room is the worst mess, cos there’s nothing much left of it, except a few pieces of wardrobe and shards of mirror. The only thing hanging is the curtain pole. He was busy while we were all messing around downstairs.
‘Yeah, you’d better not be lying, Sal. I’ve got a lot riding on this. I don’t know why you didn’t give it back when I first asked you, bitch,’ Barney says. I start to speak, because he knows that I couldn’t have . . . and then I think: he would never call me a bitch. Barney just wouldn’t. Ever.
‘Even he thinks you’re a bitch, bitch.’ says Gareth quietly, under his breath. Smiling.
Barney has unscrewed the curtain pole and he comes back into the room, holding the curtain pole in one hand and his roll of notes and a screwed-up piece of cotton wool in the other. He loops his arm around the curtain pole, jams the fifties in his pocket, unwraps the cotton wool and holds up the gold locket on its fine gold chain.
‘Give it here,’ says Gareth.
‘This it? Looks old,’ Barney says, holding it up to the light.
Gareth is gazing at the locket. Mesmerised.
‘Pass it,’ he says, coldly. ‘Now,’ he says.
‘Looks like real gold,’ says Barney, spinning it around a bit. ‘Worth a bob or two,’ he says.
Gareth is tensing with every word. ‘PASS IT!’ he shouts, and in one swift movement, Barney folds the necklace back into the cotton wool and lobs it across the sitting room, arcing over Clare’s head.
Gareth catches it with his left hand, still staring at Barney, and for a few seconds he holds it there, smiling to himself, satisfied, aware of us staring at him, and relishing every moment of his triumph.
As he looks down and opens his hand, the cotton wool folds back and he lifts his other hand leaving the gun resting next to him, and he presses the side of the locket. Just as the locket clicks open, I see a tiny movement in a triangle of mirror resting by the bedframe. In the reflection of the sitting room I can see the door behind Gareth nudging open, just a fraction.
‘So, we’ve got what we come for.’ Barney breathes out slowly. ‘So, let’s get out of here, before them coppers came.’ He nods his head towards the bathroom.
Gareth smiles, a broad white American have-a-nice-day-now grin. ‘You go ahead, Barney . . . I’ll be done in a minute. Tell Ryan not to wait up.’
‘Nah, come on, mate,’ says Barney, really friendly like. ‘We can go through this way,’ he says, beginning to pick his way through the torn clothes and empty shampoo bottles.
Gareth levels the gun at Barney and waves it towards the bathroom. ‘As I say, you go ahead,’ he says, more menacingly this time. ‘I’ve got a game to play with Coco before I go. I’ve even brought refreshments,’ he says, tapping his back pocket. ‘Haven’t I, babe?’ And he slips the bottle out of his pocket and shakes it in front of her, twists off the lid. Her eyes have glazed over as though she, Clare, that funny little girl who doesn’t like cucumber, but loves Pot Noodle, who doesn’t eat gluten but loves a pizza, who showers too long and wishes she was a Disney princess – she’s no longer inside that twisted body as paraffin is dripped onto her hair.
The door behind Gareth moves a fraction again. I’m watching it in the mirror, moving my eyes towards it, to get Barney to notice. And Gareth notices instead, sees me looking in the bedroom, and screws the lid back on the bottle
‘Don’t wanna waste it, babe, do we,’ he says. ‘Bitch,’ he says, striding over to me. ‘What you up to?’ And he’s moving towards the bedroom slowly, with the gun outstretched. ‘Is there someone else in there?’
Barney looks confused, shrugs a shrug, and hangs his head like someone who is beginning to realise that he can’t think of a way out this time, and just as Gareth crosses the threshold of Clare’s bedroom, there is a small, polite knock at our front door. Gareth looks at me as though I’m doing something to trick him.
‘It’ll be Prashi’s daughter,’ I say, quickly. Clare smacks her hand over her mouth and stifles a whimper and sinks lower to the carpet, every vertebra in her spine showing through her papery skin.
‘We’ll have made too much noise,’ I say, nodding, ‘and her mum will have sent her up to tell us to shut up, cos that’s what she does,’ I say, and he starts to train his gun on the door, and I say, ‘She’s only seven, for fuck’s sake,’ and I push myself up off the floor, knees aching, skin smarting, and he starts lowering the gun to the height he imagines a seven-year-old to be. I stagger forwards to stand in the way, between the gun and the door, and he raises the gun higher and points it at my head and smiles.
‘It’s all right, Jay,’ I whisper, leaning on the door frame. ‘It’s OK, love, we’ll shut up now, I promise, you go back to . . .’ I say, and I bring my eye to the crack in the door, looking down to where Jay would be, and there’s Sue’s shoes, and a whole load of other shoes crowded onto the landing between Kitty’s room and ours, ‘. . . bed,’ I say, looking over my shoulder at Barney, crouched with his hands over his head, and Clare curled up on the floor with her hand still over her mouth and her hair in a pool of paraffin, and Gareth across the room, smiling, with the nose of his gun pointing at my head.
‘Aim high,’ I whisper, and in the second that follows, in slow motion so that it feels like minutes, the door sweeps open, squealing on its hinges, and bounce
s against the magnolia painted wall, and I’m grabbed by the shoulders by so many hands, and flung through a crowd of police marksmen whose rifles are clicking, clicking, clicking as they range around the flat, tumbling forwards into the sitting room, until they come to rest on Gareth, whose smile slowly slips as he swings his head left and right, looking for the quickest way out, and then all the action stops and the room falls silent and there are like a million officers in the way so I can’t see what’s going on.
‘Gareth Marlon Sullivan,’ it’s Sue talking, ‘I am arresting you for the attempted murder of Clare James. You do not . . .’ and there’s a heavy thud, ‘. . . have to say anything but it may harm your defence . . .’ and a groan and a gasp of air, ‘. . . if you do not mention when questioned something which . . .’ and a click and a scrape as someone’s shoes are dragged across the floor, ‘. . . you later rely on in court. Anything you do say . . .’
And soon footsteps thunder down the stairs as nine Specialist Firearms Command officers take Gareth Marlon Sullivan away.
‘Hey, girl with the bare feet,’ I hear Barney whisper, ‘Clare, are you all right?’
And I drop to the floor because I haven’t the strength to walk and I crawl from the landing on my hands and knees. I can hear orders being given to the medics to bring stretchers, and make it snappy, that it’s three females and one male, and I think there’s only two of us and then I remember.
Clare doesn’t reply. Her spine is still curled over her pathetic bruised limbs. I can see her fingers moving, scratching, picking at the skin on the side of her thumb, and I roll her into my arms and try to warm her damp, cold skin.
Then I hear myself saying, ‘What, Barney? How?’
‘Ryan told me. Well, Ryan’s state told me. He’s off his head and he had to’ve got the money to buy his stuff from somewhere. I had to bloody crawl all the way along the attic from our place. I hate the bloody dark,’ he says. ‘And mice,’ he says.
‘What do you think we should do?’ I say.
‘I think we should get you patched up. You got blood coming out your head. And then we should get us all the fuck out of here,’ he says, and a medic wraps a blanket around Clare and the colour begins to come back to her face and Barney helps me up off the floor and gives me a hug and squeezes me tight.
