by Neil Cross
He lay there on his back, in the wet, trying to breathe. Mark Derbyshire and Sara and Howard and Bob were looking down on him.
Behind them, steam and accumulated human exhalation on the glass ceiling had erased the crisp night sky. There was only a shifting, grey obfuscation that seemed about to clear, but never did.
As Nathan got to his feet, he was aware of a great quiet. The guests in the pool stood like statues on a half-drowned island while he brushed the worst of the water from his sopping arse.
Sara's lip twisted, and soon the rest of her face followed. She spat, very slowly: 'Just piss off, Nathan.'
He thought of a dozen replies. Instead, he put his hands in his sodden pockets and said 'What's the point?' before marching away from the swimming pool and past the ballroom and once more - the final time - to the balding man at the coat check.
All this time, Bob loped at Nathan's heel like a faithful Newfoundland.
'That wasn't half an hour,' said Bob, outside. 'But it was pretty fucking committed, I'll give you that.'
They buried Elise face down, by the river. The grave was shallow, dug in the cold earth with their raw hands and the edge of chalky boulders. They covered her with rocks and gravel, upon which they sprinkled moss and twigs and leaf mould. They stuffed her clothes and shoes into a knotted carrier bag, rooted from some corner of the Volvo's boot, and buried that alongside her.
In the car on the way home they rehearsed again and again their simple story, until Nathan half-believed it to be true.
When Bob pulled up outside Nathan's front door, it was still dark.
They were filthy.
Bob said, 'We shouldn't see each other again.'
'No.'
'But you can always trust me. I need you to know that.'
'I know that.'
'And can I trust you?'
'Yes.'
Nathan opened the car door. He wavered, and then said, 'Just as long as I never see you again, Bob. I mean, not ever.'
Bob nodded.
And Nathan climbed out, on to the pavement. Soil caked his clothes and his shoes and his hair and his eyelashes. His nails were split and black with it.
He went to the main door and fumbled at the lock. Then he rushed through the door and ran upstairs and into his flat. In the December dawn, he removed his shoes and socks and shirt, his suit and his underwear, and he threw them all in the washing machine.
Then he went to take a shower. He watched the water run brown, then grey, then clear. He stared at the bar of soap in his hand, a translucent lozenge of Pears, the cleanest smell he knew, and he began to cry.
She looked at him with tired and angry eyes. Her hair was still damp, showing the tines of a comb, fragrant with shampoo.
'Fine,' said Nathan. 'Whatever.'
When she'd gone, he stood staring at the door. By the time he'd snapped out of it, he was standing there in the dark.
There was movement behind him -- a furtive rustling, as if somebody was lurking there, in a dark corner. His hackles rose like a dog's and he moved quickly round the flat, turning on the lights.
When that was done, he sat staring at the yellow bulb, anxious in case it should blow while he slept, letting the inhabited darkness creep up on him.
What little remained of Nathan was wiped out by the sunrise.
Through the plasterboard walls he could hear the flush, the kettle boiling, the muffled radio: the neighbours, waking and stirring. He thought them hallucinations.
Sara came home in the afternoon, but only to leave him.
He was lying in bed and didn't speak as she packed three suitcases, ready to cram them violently into the boot of her old Golf. She was going to stay with her friend Michelle until next Saturday, by which time she expected Nathan to have found somewhere else to live.
He got out of bed. There were colourful detonations across his field of vision. He stood there, swaying.
'Look, I'm sorry.'
'What? That you thought I was flirting with that beardy little turd? Or that you left me all alone and then embarrassed me at a party where I didn't even know anybody?'
He woke with a spasm of panic. Somebody was in bed with him.
Nose to nose, she was observing the juddering of his dreaming eyes.
All the bulbs had blown. The flat was in darkness.
It took him a long time to breathe. But it wasn't dark: it was morning.
Monday morning, his second full day in this new world. The sunlight swam in and out of focus. He ran to the toilet and vomited.
He hadn't eaten since Saturday afternoon; there was nothing left to throw up.
Rinsing away the yellow acid taste, he was too frightened to look in the mirror. But there was nothing behind him, except the bathroom.
His pale reflection resembled the survivor of some disaster, a train crash or perhaps a bomb; one who is filmed hunkered at the roadside in a grey blanket, their forehead cobwebbed with blood.
He wondered what he could do.
There was nothing. It had happened. He couldn't make it unhappen.
58
59
Neil Cross
At this impossible thought, he grabbed the edges of the sink.
There followed a moment of strange elation. Something within him seemed softly to illuminate, then to swell until it was passing through the confines of his skin. It left his body, and he was floating in the high corner of the bathroom, looking down on himself, double-imaged in the mirror. Then whatever it was began to contract, to fold about itself like a pair of wings; to draw back into his body. When it had gone, this fleeting, illogical rapture, he could not say what he'd felt, or what he'd become when, briefly, he had broken away from himself.
He showered in a hurry because he stank, but he didn't shave. He found a pair of jeans, another band T-shirt, and a plaid, fleece lined jacket. He bundled his ruined suit and his shoes and his cashmere pea coat into a carrier bag, and hunted round for his house keys. Then he went outside for the first time since becoming whatever he had become. He had to wait in the hallway until the panic had gone.
The noise and the air of Monday morning. He huddled in his jacket. Outside the flat were buses and cars and people. He passed through them. He walked half a mile. His hands were very cold, red knuckled and raw. He passed the twenty-four-hour garage and the corner shops. Then he turned into the local high street. He went into the charity shop next to the dry cleaners and handed over the carrier bag which contained the clothes he'd worn on Saturday night. Then he went to the newsagent next door.
The woman behind the counter was nervy and thin and tall. She suffered some mild form of mental illness - Nathan had stopped buying his newspapers there because sometimes she ranted at him, accusing the Council or the Royal Family or the police of having her under surveillance and controlling her thoughts. But she didn't scare him now.
He bought The Times, the Guardian, a Daily Mirror, the Sun and forty cigarettes. He folded the newspapers beneath his arm, left the shop and walked to the Moonshine Cafe.
An adult education college was being built across the road, and the cafe was full of builders in dirty jeans and work boots with exposed steel toecaps. Nathan ordered a cup of tea and a full English breakfast.
He
took an empty Formica table and opened the Mirror. He skipped through, looking for mention of Elise. Girls were missing, but none of them was her. He opened the Guardian, and skipped through that too. And the Sun and The Times.
Breakfast arrived. He pushed it around the plate and forced himself to take a mouthful of scrambled egg, which had the consistency of seafood. His body wouldn't accept it; he placed the fork on the edge of the plate. He sipped tea and tried to read the paper, but his eyes skipped over the words. He left two papers for the builders and stuffed the other two in the book-sized pocket of his jacket. He lit a cigarette. The nicotine nauseated him and made him giddy. He walked home.
The door to the flat looked blankly at him. He felt like a bur
glar.
This was Sara's place. He wondered what he'd do about finding another place to live.
At 3 p.m., when the sun grew low in the sky and dazzling, he scuttled round the flat turning on the lights. He turned on the television and watched it without seeing until it was time to go to work.
He took a second shower, more hurried than the first. He left the shower curtain open, fearing whoever might be standing there, waiting, when he opened it again.
When he'd dried himself, he didn't feel clean. He could smell his own breath, the smell of truffle, or tumour. He tried to clean his teeth and retched until luminous fish darted and wriggled in his peripheral vision. He dressed in his work clothes and the plaid jacket. He found his beanie and his wallet. From habit, he put a paperback book in his pocket. And then, as he did every weekday at the same time, he stepped out and caught the bus to work.
As he signed in at the desk, the security guard gave him a strange look.
He caught the lift to the second floor and walked to the studio.
Howard was making a cup of tea in the narrow kitchen; there were cold, squashed teabags dotted all over the glittery Formica.
Mark Derbyshire was in the tiny, shared office. Most of the lights were off. Mark's screen saver scrolled unread across his monitor, its beige casing smeared with inky fingerprints.
Stubble sprouted in the normally contoured beard that Mark believed made him look a bit less like a beaver. He was sitting at his desk, looking down into his cup of tea; his cuffs were loose, exposing his hairy forearms and gold identity bracelet.
Nathan rapped on the door. Mark looked up.
'You've got some fucking nerve, sunshine.'
'Are you going to sack me?'
'Oh, fuck. I don't know. Probably. Whatever.'
'Mark. What's wrong?'
'A friend of mine. Graham. He lost his daughter.'
Nathan wanted to sit down. He shifted his weight so it was borne by the doorway.
'What?'
Mark's scalp was naked, but for some baby-like fluff that sometimes caught the light and made him look simple and surprised, like a gigantic duckling.
'My friend, Graham. His girl. Elise. She's gone.'
'Gone where?'
'That's the thing, mate. Nobody knows. She was at the party.'
'What -- your party?'
'Yes -- my party. Then . . .' He made a fluttering, bird-like motion with his hand. 'She was gone.'
Nathan pulled up a moulded plastic chair. He hoped the gesture looked intimate and concerned. He could no longer stand.
'Where'd she go?'
'Nobody knows. That's the point.'
Howard arrived.
'Kettle's boiled.'
'Yeah,' said Nathan. 'Cheers. Has somebody called the police?'
'Graham's got friends on the force,' said Mark. 'They're already on it. None of this "missing for twenty-four hours" bollocks. They were round my place by Sunday evening. I was still in bed.'
'Well. That's great. That's good news.'
Mark knuckled at his raw eyes. 'You really are a little prick, aren't you?'
Nathan looked at Howard. Howard raised an eyebrow and shrugged.
Mark said, 'Unless she turns up, and soon, the show's fucked. I've already been interviewed by the police. How long do you think it'll be before the tabloids get hold of that?'
'I see,' said Nathan. 'Right.'
'Right.'
There was no show that evening - they'd be playing a 'best of compilation, one of several they kept behind for illness and other emergencies. Howard and Mark had turned up simply from habit, to sit in the half-lit offices, drinking coffee. Neither was married. Not any more.
Nathan said, 'I'm sorry. For Saturday night. Trying to hit you and that.'
Mark waved it away. They could hear the late-night traffic outside.
Nathan
felt insubstantial.
He said, 'I thought she was going to sleep with you.'
'Who? Your bird?'
'Yeah. Sara.'
'Fat fucking chance. All she did was jabber about you. Rabbit fucking rabbit.'
Nathan's head twitched.
'I'm sorry?'
'All she did was talk about you. How brilliant you are. How I could use you better. Blah blah blah.'
Nathan smiled at his lap.
'Right,' he said.
'The funny thing is, I was sort of starting to believe her.'
Nobody spoke until Nathan said, 'Fuck it. Shall we go for a drink ?'
The only place they could find was a cheesy nightclub. The music was too loud for conversation -- so they just sat round a table and drank, and got drunk, and caught taxis home.
The next morning, a smiling snapshot of Elise Fox was on the front page of the Daily Mirror. But the main photograph was of Mark Derbyshire. He looked unshaven and haunted, snapped getting into his BMW. He wore a polo shirt that was too small for him, and a leather jacket that was too young for him, jeans that were too baggy, and a baseball cap and sunglasses that did not suit him.
The headline read FEARS GROW FOR PARTY GIRL, 19. The subheading was Elise 'Not Seen' Since Disgraced DJ's Showbiz Party.
In the snapshot, Elise was smiling. Nathan stared at it. He couldn't connect the face to the dead girl they had lain face down and naked in the soil.
The full story was on pages 9--13, and Nathan looked it up. But all he saw was a rehearsal of Mark Derbyshire's previous, disastrous run in with the tabloid press -- and a sneering list of the Z-list celebrities 'rumoured' to have been in attendance at his party.
In the evening, Nathan turned up for work as usual. But again, Mark Derbyshire didn't.
The deep scores in Howard's face were deeper. Tonight there was no 'best of tape. Instead, the station had pulled Dave Huckabee, a retired breakfast DJ from a chair on the local television news. Dave had agreed to host the show until Mark Derbyshire returned.
Mark Derbyshire had been accused of no crime, but from the moment another man slipped on his headphones and sat before his microphone, that became a technicality. So did Mark's acquittal, fully thirteen years before. All that mattered to the press was the past accusation and the humiliation that followed it: Mark's 'fall from grace'.
Nathan looked at the newspaper photograph of Mark and was moved to a terrified pity. But he knew he'd let Mark go to prison forever before he allowed himself to be implicated in Elise Fox's disappearance.
He thought of his own face in the newspapers, and felt the world spinning out of control.
The next afternoon, two police officers came to his door.
10
The man -- who was compact, with reddish hair - introduced himself as DS William Holloway. With him was PC Jacki Hadley.
Nathan invited them in.
Holloway asked if he might have a glass of water, then went to the kitchenette and took a mug from the drainer. The mug had been sitting there so long its base was filmed with dust.
The woman, Hadley, stood by the window. A double-decker bus went past. Hadley was watching it. Nathan understood. There was something surreal and fascinating about it: an upper deck of oblivious strangers, sailing directly past your living-room window.
Holloway drained the water.
'Do you mind if I sit?'
'Please.'
He took a dining chair, the first person to sit in it since Sara, in just a T-shirt, reading the Guardian Review.
Hadley stayed by the window, hands clasped at the small of her back, watching the intermittent buses go past.
Nathan sat on the sofa and crossed his legs, offering Holloway a cigarette. Holloway said, 'Not since New Year's Eve, 1989,' and took a biro from his jacket. 'So, Mr Redmond.'
'Nathan.'
'So, Nathan. I expect you'll have gathered why we're here.'
'Pretty much. Mark's party.'
Holloway pointed the biro at him, as if to say Well done!, then said, 'What time did you arrive at the party?'
'I don't kno
w. Nine, maybe. A bit later.'
'And what time did you leave?'
'That, I can't tell you.'
Holloway scrutinized him.
'Drinking,' said Nathan. 'Quite heavily. Quaffing.'
There was a patch of sweat between Nathan's shoulder blades.
Holloway said, 'And while you were there - quaffing - did you see, or speak to Elise Fox?'
'Not that I know of
'Not that you know of
'I mean - there were like a million people there. So all night you're hello this and excuse me that. So I suppose I might have, whatever.
Said hello or something.'
'There's no need to be so nervous. I'm not hungry.'
Nathan boggled at him.
Holloway said, 'I'm not going to eat you.'
'Oh. Ha ha. Yes.'
Holloway grinned, and from his pocket he took a packet of Chewits. He unwrapped four of them, placing the wrappers neatly back in his pocket. Then he popped the sweets into his mouth, four at once, and, chewing, said, 'Did you, to your knowledge - accepting the fact of your heavy drinking - did you see Elise Fox?'
'Not to my knowledge, no.'
'So, I understand you left the party - and then came back.'
'That's right.'
'You left at what time?'
'I'm not sure. Pretty late.'
'After midnight?'
'Before, I'd say. Just before. Quarter to? But I can't be sure. I was--'
'Drinking heavily, I know. So what happened?'
'How do you mean?'
'You left the party, why?'
'Oh. I had an argument.'
'With . . . ?'
'My girlfriend. You know how it is.'
Holloway's cool look implied that no, he didn't know how it was.
And Nathan began to wonder if his apparent ennui might not be some kind of affectation.
'You argued about what?'
'Well, it wasn't an argument. Not at first.'
'Then what was it?'
'I saw her. Dancing with Mark.'
'Mark Derbyshire?'
'The one and only. Yes.'
'And . . .'
'And I got pissed off
'Because she was dancing with him?'
'Because of the way she was dancing.'
'How was she dancing?'
