The Society of Dirty Hearts

by Ben Cheetham

  Julian noticed that there was a message in his Facebook inbox. It was from Morsus. ‘I’ll be in The Cut tonight’ it read. He stared at the message, fingers hesitating over the keyboard, a queer feeling in his stomach, like a hunger pang, only deeper and heavier. He wasn’t debating what to do. He knew he had to see her, speak to her. The question that bothered him was, to what end? What would come of it? Swallowing, he typed ‘I’ll see you there’ and hit reply. He moved to lie down. The queer feeling sat on his stomach, tiredness throbbed in his head. He couldn’t let himself sleep, though. It wasn’t safe. Not with the dream lurking like a viper in the darkness behind his eyelids.

  After a sleepless rest, Julian took Henry for a walk in the forest. They didn’t get far. A policeman blocked the path. He could see others amongst the trees, advancing in a long line, combing the undergrowth.

  For a second day running, Julian’s dad didn’t return home in time for the evening meal. He knew then that his mum was right about there being something wrong with his dad’s business. “So come on,” said Christine as they ate. She was smiling, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness in her voice. “Tell us what Mike Hill wanted. We’re dying to know.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I just can’t, that’s all.”

  “Has all this secrecy got something to do with your dad?”

  When Julian made no reply, Christine glanced at Wanda, as though his silence confirmed something they’d been discussing. “I think I’ll eat in my room,” he said, standing.

  “There’s no need for that, Jules. I won’t ask any more questions about it.” An edge crept into Christine’s voice. “In fact, if that’s the way it is, I just won’t ask you any questions about anything.”

  Julian winced inwardly, hating to see his mum waste the little energy she had on anger. After eating, he got ready to go out, taking longer than usual over it. When his dad still wasn’t home by seven, he started to feel impatient. He wanted to be there when his mum was told about Joanne Butcher. He wanted to make sure she was told. At eight o’clock, he went in search of her, intending to tell her himself. But when he saw her so fragile and tired looking, he knew he couldn’t break his promise. “I’m going out,” he said. She made no sign of having heard him. He let out a slight sigh. “Don’t be like that, Mum.”

  “I’m not being like anything,” Christine said, without looking at him. “You’re a grown man now, Julian. You go where you want, see who you want, say what you want, and live with the consequences. It’s about time both of us recognised that.”

  Chapter 5

  As Julian drove to The Cut, his mum’s words weighed on his mind. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to be ‘a grown man’. And he knew with absolute certainty that he wasn’t ready to ‘live with the consequences’, whatever they might be. He felt an urge to turn around, head home and tell her about everything – about Joanne Butcher’s corpse, the dream, everything. He wanted to lay his head on her lap, feel her stroke his hair, hear her tell him everything would be alright. He wanted her to soothe him off to sleep, like she’d used to do. But he didn’t turn around. Another stronger urge – an urge that was both within and outside his understanding – prevented him from doing so.

  Mia Bradshaw was sat on her own at the same table as the previous night. She was dressed the same, too. When she looked at Julian, he saw that her mask of makeup was streaked, as if she’d been crying. She wasn’t crying now, though. Her eyes were like blue porcelain. They seemed to be weighing him up, or maybe working out what they could get from him. Under their steady examination, he suddenly felt – despite the years he had on her – very young and green.

  “I’m Julian,” he said, for want of something to say.

  “I know.”

  He motioned to her empty glass. “Do you want another?”

  “Vodka and coke, double.”

  Conscious of Mia’s eyes following him, Julian ordered her drink and the same for himself. Upon returning to the table, he said, “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your friend.”

  The eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Why should you be sorry?”

  “Because, well, because I am…” Julian trailed off lamely.

  Mia drank her drink. Then she reached for Julian’s and drank that, too. “Is that why you’re here, because you feel sorry for me?”

  Julian was silent a moment, then he admitted, “No.”

  Mia tapped her glass. “I’ll have another.”

  Julian fetched another round. Mia lit a cigarette. She smoked a little self-consciously, like someone for whom the habit wasn’t yet automatic. Looking at her through the smoke she exhaled in his face, Julian caught a glimpse of what she really was – a fifteen-year old girl trying to look and act eighteen. As if suddenly conscious of this, she crushed the cigarette out after only five or six puffs. “Tell me what Jo looked like,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” Julian asked, although he knew what she meant.

  “What did she look like when you found her?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  Face intense as a knife-cut, Mia leant forward close enough so that Julian could smell her alcopop-sweet breath. “I want to know every detail.”

  Julian glanced around. The bar was busier than the previous night, most of the surrounding tables were occupied. Although the music pumping out over the sound system made conversation difficult to overhear, he didn’t fancy describing how Jo Butcher’s corpse had looked with other people in earshot. He didn’t fancy describing it again at all, but something told him he’d have difficulty refusing Mia that, or anything else she asked. “My car’s outside. Let’s go somewhere else, somewhere quiet.”

  Mia gave Julian that quick, weighing-up look again. She spoke in a flat, hard voice that went through him like a shiver. “Just so long as you promise not to rape me and murder me and hide my body in the forest.”

  The queer deep, heavy feeling flared, pushing up Julian’s throat, big as a fist. “That’s not funny.”

  “It’s not meant to be.” Mia threw back her drink and stood up. When Julian remained seated, frowning at her, she said impatiently, “Well, come on then, let’s get going.”

  “But I haven’t promised yet.”

  Mia gave a little smirk, as if to say, oh, I think I can handle anything you’ve got, and then some. Biting back his irritation, Julian led her to his car. “Nice wheels,” she said.

  “Where shall we go?”

  “Start driving and I’ll tell you, rich boy.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Why not? That’s what you are, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yeah, I suppose, but–”

  Mia cut Julian off with a loud exhalation. He stared at her a moment, then started the engine. “Which way?”

  She pointed and he followed the line of her finger. She switched on the radio and, finding a tune she liked, turned it up loud. She sat slumped down in the car seat, listlessly staring out the window, trying to appear relaxed, bored even. But there was a tension about her. Julian noticed that her right hand trembled ever so slightly, while her left fidgeted with something in her jacket pocket. They drove to the northern edge of town, to The High Bridge.

  “Stop here,” Mia said.

  They pulled over in front of a sign displaying the telephone number of The Samaritans, which had been put up a few years earlier after a spate of suicides. They walked beneath the arched steel frame to the centre of the three-hundred foot span. “You can understand in a way why people come here to end it all,” said Mia, leaning out over the murmuring black water. “It’s such a beautiful place.”

  Staring down at the swirls of foam stirred up by the bridge’s massive concrete feet, Julian couldn’t help but shudder. As Mia leant out further, he resisted an urge to grab her and pull her back. “Tell me about it,” she said, almost as if she was speaking to the river.

  So Julian told her. She listened seemingly impassive
ly, but after he was finished she took a quivering breath and said, “Fuck, I need a drink. You got anything to drink?”

  Julian took out a lump of dope. “I’ve got this.”

  “That’ll do. You got anything we can sit on?”

  “There’s a blanket in the car.”

  Mia started back towards the car. “Where we going now?” asked Julian.

  She didn’t reply. They got the blanket and Julian followed her, groping his way in the moonlit dark, down a narrow dirt path that snaked back and forth along the steep grassy bank beneath the eaves of the bridge. At the bottom of the bank was a flat space with a graffiti-scarred concrete pillar at its centre. There were cans, bottles and scraps of blackened foil strewn around. Mia picked up a can of lighter fluid and squirted it over the remains of an old fire. She lit a match and dropped it. Flames whooshed up, throwing crazily dancing shadows everywhere. Julian spread the blanket over the ground and they sat watching the fire, smoking a joint.

  “So do you think someone killed her?” asked Mia, fidgeting in her pocket again.

  “I dunno.”

  “You said there were marks on her face and neck.”

  “Yeah, but my dog made those. I think. Anyway, everyone I’ve spoken to thinks she overdosed.”

  Mia snorted. “They would.”

  “You think they’re wrong.”

  “Fucked if I know. She probably did OD. She always said that’s how she’d go. And, hey, if she was right, all those fuckers you spoke to can tut and nod and shake their little heads.”

  It’s not like that, Julian wanted to say. But it was like that, and he knew it. “What was she taking?”

  Mia shrugged. “Anything she could get her hands on. Speed, acid, E, ketamine – she was crazy for it all.”

  “Heroin?”

  The light of the flames picked out frown lines gathering on Mia’s face. “She said she didn’t do that stuff. But I know she did. I saw the needle marks.”

  “What about you? You ever tried it?”

  “Once,” Mia admitted as if it was something she’d rather forget. She added quickly, “I didn’t inject it, though. There’s no way I’d stick a needleful of that shit in my arm. I didn’t want to do it at all, but Jo kept nagging and nagging me. She had this thing about trying everything once before she croaked. I ended up giving in, like I always do. But I made her promise we’d only do it once. We had this big fuck off argument when I saw the needle marks. I called her a liar, and she told me to go fuck myself. That was a couple of weeks ago.” She chewed her lips, pain shining in her eyes. “We never spoke again.”

  “Where did you get the heroin from?”

  Mia laughed as if to say, you’ve got to be fucking kidding. She dragged the joint down to its roach, and flicked it into the fire. “Roll another,” she said. As Julian did so, she asked, “So what’s it like being a rich kid?”

  Julian ignored her.

  “Come on, don’t be shy,” she persisted. “I want to know. What’s it like living in a big house, driving a nice car, knowing you only have to put out your hands and everything you ever want’ll fall into them.”

  Julian sighed. “Am I supposed to be ashamed? Have I done something wrong?”

  “I dunno. Have you?”

  To his irritation, Julian found himself blinking away from Mia’s gaze. He bent to light the spliff in the fire. “Must be nice,” Mia said. “Not being stuck in this shitty little town, living a shitty little life.”

  Now it was Julian’s turn to snort. “Who says I’m not stuck?”

  “You go to university down in London, don’t you?”

  “How do you know that?”

  Mia smiled coyly. “Someone told me.”

  Julian passed her the joint. “Yeah, well, did they tell you I’m doing a business degree I fucking hate, and that at the end of it I’m expected to come back here and help my dad run his business, and in another five or ten years I’ll be expected to take over running the business. A business which, by the way, I find about as interesting as this town.”

  Mia was silent a moment, thoughtful, then she said, “I guess we’re all stuck in our own little boxes.”

  They passed the joint back and forth. Julian lay back and stared at the underside of the bridge. His eyelids felt heavy as stone. “But what if someone wanted to get away, just disappear someplace. Do you think that’s possible?” asked Mia.

  “I don’t know. There’s this guy at uni whose parents got sick of the rat race and decided to drop out of society. Now they live on a commune in some woods in Preseli.”

  “Where’s Preseli?”

  “Wales. They generate their own power, grow their own food, look after goats, horses and chickens.”

  Mia sniffed down her nose. “Sounds boring as shit.”

  “Not to me. Sometimes I think about going there myself. This guy says everyone’s welcome, and you can stay as long as you like, a day, a year, whatever. No one asks any questions about who you are, where you’re from, or why you’re there. Just imagine, no boxes. You can be whoever you want to be.”

  Mia stared at the fire, her face intent. After a moment, she shook her head. “I think that guy was shitting you. No place like that really exists.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s only one way to truly disappear.” Julian drew a line with his finger from the bridge’s railings to the water.

  A strange, distant light came into Mia’s eyes. Julian watched her watching the river flow past. Her pupils looked huge and black in the firelight, like a doll’s. She began to rock gently, as if hypnotized. Suddenly, with a quick intake of breath, she snatched her hand out of her pocket. There was blood on her palm. “What happened?” asked Julian, sitting up in alarm. Mia didn’t reply, but her eyes came back to themselves and she lifted her hand to her mouth and licked the blood away. More welled up in a thin, straight line.

  “It’s strange,” she said, her voice low and dreamy, like a sleepwalker’s.

  “What’s strange?”

  “When I saw you the other day you seemed so familiar. I felt as if I knew your face.”

  “You’ve probably seen me around town before.”

  “Maybe.” Mia sounded unconvinced. She turned her intense blue gaze on Julian. “You feel that way, too, don’t you? I can tell from the way you look at me. It’s like you’re trying to work out where you know me from.”

  Julian licked his suddenly dry lips and spoke hesitantly. “I’m not sure how I feel when I look at you.”

  A moment of silence passed between them. Mia bent and kissed Julian, a kiss as deep and heavy as the ache in his stomach, a kiss that felt wrong to him, and wronger still with every second it continued. His blood hammering in his temples, he pulled away.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Nothing…I…” stammered Julian.

  “Don’t you want me?”

  Yes, he wanted her, but some whisper in his consciousness told him that giving in to that want would be like jumping off the bridge above, only less intimate and final. “What I want’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “I thought we had a connection.”

  “We do. I don’t understand it, but it’s there.”

  “I’m not a virgin, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  One side of Julian’s mouth lifted. “Yeah, I kind of guessed that.”

  “So what is it then?” Mia pouted, obviously not used to being turned down. “You bent or something?”

  “Don’t talk stupid.”

  Mia’s eyes flashed scorn at Julian. “I’m not the fuckin’ stupid one here.” She jumped up and started to walk away, flinging over her shoulder, “If you don’t want me, I’ll just have to find someone else to fuck.”

  “Wait, Mia, don’t go.” Julian tried to get up, but whether from the dope or lack of sleep or both, his body felt like lead, his arms straw. The darkness quickly swallowed Mia. He lay thinking about her. He thought about the blood on her palm. She must have had
a knife in her pocket – perhaps for self-defence, perhaps for use on herself, perhaps both. He ran his tongue over his lips, tasting her. He massaged the heel of his hand hard into his stomach, trying to push the heaviness away. It was as immovable as a rock. With a low groan, head spinning, he closed his eyes, giving in to the tiredness dogging him. The instant he did so, the dream attacked him with savage force, as vivid as a waking hallucination.

  When Julian awoke, the fire had burnt down to glowing embers and he was shivering cold. He sat with his shoulders scrunched forward, his nose running and his mouth full of sticky, bitter saliva. A kind of raw sickness gnawed at his insides. The river drew his eyes. Momentarily, he considered stripping off and washing in it, washing himself free of the guilt. But it wouldn’t work, he knew. It would take more than water to wash away the memory of the dream. He climbed the bank to the car and drove home through the quiet of dawn.

  Chapter 6

  Christine was in the kitchen, drinking coffee. There were dark clouds under her eyes. Sometimes, even with all the pills, the pain prevented her from sleeping properly. “You smell like a fire,” she said, looking at Julian with curiosity and concern as he poured cereal into a bowl and got out the milk. “Where’ve you been all night?”

  “With a friend.”

  “Which friend?”

  “Does it matter? Just a friend,” Julian muttered through a mouthful of cornflakes. He gave his mum a sullen glance. “Anyway, what’s it to you where I was? What I do’s my own business. Isn’t that what you said last night?”

  Christine sighed. “Yes, I said something to that effect. And I meant it. But that doesn’t stop me from worrying about you, Julian. Especially when you drag yourself home looking like death warmed over. And especially when you’ve made such a traumatic discovery so recently.”

  Julian stopped eating. “Dad’s told you then.”

  Christine nodded. She reached out to gently take hold of her son’s wrist. “Don’t worry, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But if you do want to talk about it or anything else, anything at all, then I’m here. I’ll always be here for you, you know that.”