Decay Inevitable

by Conrad Williams

“She feels fine to me,” came the lazy, beer-loose voice. His hand palpated and pinched the breast. The cold, rather than his ministrations, was thickening her nipple. But Knifeman didn’t have the wit to understand. Will wanted to smack the curl from his lips, tear those sleazy, half-shut lids wide open. His blood rushed with the thought of violence.

  “Do you dance?” asked Knifeman, stepping closer to Elisabeth. He licked his broad lips and they gleamed as though forged from metal. He pressed a denim-clad thigh into the dip where her own met. “You have a dancer’s body. I bet you move like nobody’s business.”

  The head on top of the fleece started jerking with laughter. “Want to trade a dance with your wife for your girl?”

  Will clenched his hand into a fist. “So she is here?”

  “She is for the sake of my offer. Whether she is once your bitch shakes her arse for us might be a different matter.”

  Something went wrong in Will’s mind. It was like the slow bend of a green stick deep within: nothing snapped, but he went dizzy for a second, the earth slanting away from him at an alarming angle. He heard himself say You fucking and then there was just a thrum of blood turning his ears hot. When conventional images were tucked into his eyes once more, he saw that his hand was badly gashed and Knifeman was out cold, his blade held loosely between his thumb and forefinger. Elisabeth scrabbled for the knife as the other men closed in. They faced each other uneasily. The women pulled shawls around their nakedness, the children ran into the shadows.

  Very clearly, a cry, Sadie’s cry, went up into the freezing sky: “Don’t!”

  “So,” Will said, trying to keep the edginess from his voice. “Where is she?”

  The fires were burning down. Before long they would be dead, plunging the wasteland into complete darkness. Any advantage that the knife was giving them would be lost. Sadie shrieked again.

  “What’s happening to her?” Elisabeth demanded, passing the knife to Will.

  “We only wanted you to dance for us,” Fleece said. “Now look at what you’ve done. I think, after we’ve fucked your daughter, we’ll kill you and bury you in the cow shit in that field.”

  Will, as if in slow motion, stepped forwards and slid the point of the knife almost nonchalantly into Fleece’s shoulder. He yelled to Elisabeth to run, and they did, Will dropping the weapon in his shock and panic. He followed her towards the caravans while shouts and curses raged behind them. Catching up, he grabbed Elisabeth’s hand.

  “We’ll lose them in there somewhere. Try to be quiet and keep your head down. Just for a little while. Till I find Sadie.”

  Towards the rear of the cluster of caravans, they found another scattering of spent fuel drums. They huddled among them, shivering. Sometimes the voices came close and then drifted away. Will couldn’t work out whether it was proximity or a trick of the wind. He held Elisabeth close to him, and after what felt like hours, the voices faded until they were rewarded with complete silence.

  Will lifted his head above the rim of an oil drum. The caravans were little more than grainy pale blocks against the night. One or two windows pulsed with waxy, orange light. The camp was asleep.

  “I should go,” Will whispered. “I should find Sadie. That fucking girl.”

  Elisabeth’s eyes broadened under the skimpy moonlight. “I have to come with you,” she urged.

  “No. Please stay here. If something goes wrong, you have to get away. Contact the police. Sort it all out.”

  “Why don’t we do that now?” Elisabeth said, but the tone of her voice had already answered her own question.

  Will said nothing, but gradually worked at Elisabeth’s hands until he was free. “Give me twenty minutes,” he said. “If I’m not back by then, get out quick. Promise me?”

  Elisabeth drew him to her and kissed him clumsily, almost desperately. “Hurry. Please,” she whispered, looking away from his face.

  “Wait, Eli,” Will said. “Twenty minutes.”

  And then he was away. She tried to keep track of him as, crouching, he crept towards the first of the caravans, but it was too dark. Did he stumble? Was that what caused the sudden confusion of noise? And now a shape approaching her. Pale. Was it him? Was it Will, returning already?

  CHAPTER TWENTY: THE WALL

  SEAN MET THE others for breakfast at 8.30. The sky was teeming. Figures without umbrellas were bent double, their coats and jackets drawn up around their heads. Water sluiced along the street, reflecting the miserable black seam of cloud.

  “It’s just sitting there,” observed Robbie, a huge mug of tea obscuring most of his face. “A big, black bladder of piss. Pissing on us.”

  Lutz flicked a baked bean at him from his plate. “That... is poetry.”

  Trio’s was like any other breakfast hang-out. Populated mainly by the men working on the demolition site, it was also first-stop for a number of ashen-faced office workers poring over briefcases filled with pages and mobile phones that never seemed to cease ringing. The windows were simultaneously drenched with condensation and fogged with heat. The place was run by three Italian guys. During the rush, when plates of chips, sausage, egg, toast, and bacon were being passed around and devoured, their voices ricocheted off the walls as they called out fresh orders or lambasted the help: two women dwarfed by the huge steel tea urns, apparently doomed to a lifetime of scraping a layer of butter onto bread or hunting down the carousel of red and brown sauce.

  Sean was sitting with his back against the wall, watching the smears of colour hurry past the window. He felt nauseated by what had happened the day before, but the boys around him were helping to make him feel normal again, part of a crowd, rather than someone picked out for the limelight.

  There was one customer he had noticed who visited every day and seemed to end up bickering with the staff about his order. Here he came now. He wore a red, corduroy jacket and blue jeans. Caterpillar boots. Simple black T-shirt. He shed his earphones and dug in his pocket for some change with one hand while the other marked his place in a paperback.

  “No,” the chap was saying now. “I said mustard. Who has tomato sauce on a hot beef sandwich? Mustard. Anyway, it doesn’t even sound like tomato sauce. Or ketchup.”

  The old Italian guy said sorry maybe a dozen times, his voice thick with accent. Sean liked Luigi. He had a kind face, even though it was heavily lined. He had friendly, sorry eyes magnified by unflattering glasses; his hair was oiled and swept back from his forehead. His brothers were younger, beefier. Sansone had a series of diagonals shaved into his right eyebrow and wore a Fiorentina football shirt; Pepe sweated profusely and rarely lost his expression of bewilderment.

  “Reminds me of Salty, that,” Robbie said, gesturing towards the counter. “Every day is the fucking same for Salty in this caff. He asks for marmalade on his toast. Every morning. They stick Marmite on it. He says something about it and some of them, especially the hard-looking one, complain, make a big song and dance. I half-think he does it on purpose. Fucking Italian stereotype game. Scowling like he’s some mob fuck with an itch up his shitter. He goes: ‘Fack, meester, iss like you ask Marmite I give you Marmite but iss no facking good. Iss marmalard you want. Haysoo facking Chrize, man. You thin’ I here for your good health an sanidy?’

  “So this morning, right, he gets it spot on, first time. Without Salty having to ask for it. Marmalade. No problem. Salty, mad bastard, tells him he wants Marmite. The fucker barred him. Barred him from a caff, for fuck’s sake.”

  “This weekend,” Nicky Preece was saying. “What do you say?”

  A friend of the family was getting married. Nicky, as best man, was organising the stag do, which would be an all-day affair. The celebrations were due to begin on the Saturday morning: a game of football at Victoria Park. Nicky was trying to recruit some ringers.

  “It’s nothing serious, just a kick-around, really.”

  “Will there be nets?” Jez asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  Jez shrugged. “I find you can
’t have a really decent game of footie unless you get some nets. It’s the sound of the ball hitting the back of it. That kind of wet, whipping noise.”

  Robbie laughed. “A noise you and your mother know all too well, eh, Jezzer?”

  “’K off.”

  “Look, we need five more people. That’s all. It’d be great if you lot turned up. We’d have a laugh.”

  “This Saturday, you say?” Lutz asked. “Only I can’t make it.”

  “Fuck,” Nicky spat.

  “Me either,” said Jez.

  “But you were just asking about nets.” Nicky looked around him, as though for confirmation that this was so.

  “Yeah, but I was just asking for the others. You can’t have a decent game without nets.”

  Sean said, “I’ll go. If you want me.”

  “That’s great,” Nicky said. “Anyone else? Robbie?”

  Robbie nodded, his mouth full of bread.

  Nicky gave him an OK sign. “Come on, Tim. You look like a footballer.”

  Tim was bent over his poached egg on toast, still bovinely chewing his first mouthful. In this time, Lutz had gobbled his breakfast and was half-way through his second mug of tea. Tim sat up at the mention of his name and swivelled his large, moth eyes until he was staring at Nicky.

  “Brittle bones,” he said. “Asthma. Glue ear. Angina...”

  “Okay, okay,” Nicky said, wearily. “I asked you if you wanted a game of footy. I didn’t ask you for a list of stuff queuing up to kill you.”

  Tim said, “Piles.”

  THEY MADE GOOD progress that morning. Nicky and Sean worked as a team on a fresh wall while the others pulled up floorboards in another room. In his T-shirt, sweat hooping the neck and armpits, Sean had mastered the art of talking and working with the hammer.

  “We going to need special kit for this game?” he asked, swinging the tool over his head.

  “Nah,” Nicky said. He was taking a breather, leaning against the handle of his hammer while he watched Sean work. “We’re hiring kit from the sports centre there. Nothing serious though, we’ll just have a kick-about if not that many turn up. I doubt they will. Freezing cold morning. I must be bloody mad. Should be good though.”

  “You lot hang around together quite a bit then?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. It’s a tight little unit, you know.”

  Sean whipped his head around, trying to get the sweat out of his eyes. “And Vernon. Is he part of it?”

  “Vernon’s his own man. We hardly see him. I like it like that. Same with Salty and the Rap. Upstairs men. Not like us. Salty, maybe, but not really.”

  Sean let him chew on the silence a while and concentrated on his job, waiting for the question. The wall was coming apart, slowly, but the deeper they got into the building, the sturdier the construction. It was as though in the building of the de Fleche tower they had run out of decent stuff towards the top and substituted inferior materials. It was hard going now and would become harder. But that suited Sean. He was building himself up in the evenings, working hard at his press-ups and sit-ups and squat thrusts. He was running hard in the mornings, up to five miles a day now, and he felt better than ever.

  “The other day, when Vernon wanted to see you. How did it go?”

  “Fine,” Sean said. “He just wanted to welcome me on board. Took me for a beer.”

  “Oh,” said Nicky, non-committally. “Nice one.”

  “You don’t sound convinced. Did he not buy you a pint when you joined up?”

  “Well, yeah. But me and the boys thought there was something more than that.”

  “Really?” Sean said, not giving anything away. He didn’t want to piss Nicky off too much. He desperately wanted to inveigle his way into the gang; a football match and an afternoon in the pub would go a long way towards cementing their relationship.

  “Well. Yeah. We knew Kev. The guy who was... well, I suppose he was Vernon’s right-hand man. He was invalided out, couple of weeks ago. We all thought Lutz was going to get picked to work with Vernon but then you came along.”

  “Invalided out?”

  “Vernon didn’t tell you any of this?”

  Sean stopped swinging the hammer. He stepped back and ran his forearm across his face. “No he didn’t. Where’s Tim? I need a drink.”

  Nicky Preece was obviously unsure as to whether or not to go on with his story. He picked up his mallet and took over from Sean, bashing the wall at a much quicker pace than his partner, but with less power.

  “Kev got shot,” said Nicky. “He and Vernon were visiting the owner of a nightclub. This guy, he owed Vernon some money, I think. But the nightclub owner was savvy to him. Tooled up. Vernon got out by the skin of his teeth. Kev was cornered in an alleyway by a couple of bouncers. Shot through the throat. He works on his allotment now. Digging beetroot and shit.”

  “Where?”

  Nicky said, “Out Bewsey way. The bouncers got their comeuppance though. One of them was blinded in an acid attack a few weeks later. Nobody’s saying nothing about who did it, but, well...”

  Sean looked at him calmly. Nicky returned his gaze. He downed tools and smiled at Sean, breathing hard. “You know,” he said, “it’s the weirdest thing. I can’t help it, talking to you, but it’s like talking to the police.”

  Sean laughed. “I’m as much a policeman as you are a circus clown.”

  “I don’t mean anything by it, mate,” Nicky said. “I don’t want to get on the wrong side of you or anything, but you don’t half act like a copper sometimes.”

  “How do you mean?” Sean asked, trying to appear amused.

  “The silences. The one-word questions. The look. You have got the classic look of a copper.”

  “Which is?”

  “No offence, but bland as fuck. You know. Dead cold stare. No expression.”

  “And you’d know all about that, would you?”

  Nicky grinned. “Too much. I’ve been a good lad these past five years, but I was a terror, let me tell you, when I was in my teens.”

  “So what about Vernon? What’s he up to?”

  “You tell me, PC.”

  Sean kicked the hammer across the floor. “That isn’t funny. And I’d prefer it if you didn’t bring this up again with any of the others.”

  “Why not? It’s just a laugh.”

  “I don’t find it funny. And I don’t want people thinking I’ve got anything to do with our boys in blue. Okay? Jesus Christ, I’ve had a hard enough time as it is without being mistaken for a fucking flatfoot as well.”

  Nicky patted him on the arm. “I’m sorry, all right? I’m a tit. Speak my mind, that’s all. No harm meant.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s forget it. But Vernon... tell me about Vernon.”

  Born Vernon Lord, nobody knows where, nobody knows when. Left school without any qualifications. Worked for a series of low-lifes and hoods across the Northwest of England and, for a short period, as bodyguard to a stripper in a Soho bar.

  Never married. No form. No known relatives.

  Vernon Lord now lives in a very nice house in Appleton. He knows his martial arts and his military history. He knows his weapons best of all.

  It is rumoured that he has murdered in the region of seventeen people over the last twenty-five years.

  What is it with this fucker? Sean thought. No form? No form? The man is a psychopath. He was standing over the stove, steaming some broccoli to go with his re-heated curry from the previous night.

  As if summoning the man, his mobile chirped. It was Vernon.

  “Tomorrow night. Runcorn. I need to drop by on a client. And then we’ve got to get some video rolling. Can you come?”

  “I don’t know about that, Vernon. I’m supposed to be cooking dinner for a friend.”

  “You’re not doing too badly, are you? Only been here five minutes and you’ve got work and mates coming out of your backside. Bird is it?”

  “A friend,” Sean reiterated.

  “Name?”
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  “I couldn’t possibly tell you that.”

  “Aww, and us best chums and all. You can tell me.”

  “Esmerelda, her name is. Esmerelda Arbuckle. The third.”

  “Right. I see. So the job. The job. You won’t do it? I strongly advise that you do. Bring your woman with you. Big, is she?”

  “Go to hell, Vernon. I’m not your puppet.” Phone down.

  Sean poured himself a drink. A large brandy. No longer hungry, he switched off the stove and took his glass to the window. Some view. Not that he was taking it in. The steep embankment choked with nettles and fast-food wrappers was a dark slab in the night, bejewelled with frost. The sleepers gleamed coldly atop it. Something squirmed through the undergrowth: a rat, maybe, or a cat. A bottle smashed in the alleyway and a flurry of giggles followed the sound.

  Sean was thinking of Tim Enever.

  He had left Nicky when the questions had veered too close to home, using his thirst as an excuse. The rest of the building was consumed with noises generated by the wind. He was convinced that there must be animals living on some of these floors, judging by some of the scratching and scampering sounds that echoed through the walls. The others were working a floor beneath him and Nicky, stripping out architraves and dados and skirting boards. He saw Tim leaving them, scuffing his way towards the lifts that were no longer working and standing in front of them for a few seconds before the penny dropped. Plodding to the stairwell, he descended two floors and moved into a room off the main corridor; this much Sean could see from where he stood.

  Sean followed. He watched Tim moving through the rooms of what had once been a suite of offices. A notice board on the wall contained a holiday planner for 1994 and a photograph from an office party: three men and three women adorned with tinsel, wearing funny hats and booze-loosened smiles. Tim observed the traffic through the window as it was chased along the carriageway by sunlight slipping from a bank of hard, black cloud low to the west. Then he went to the opposite wall and placed his hands against the plaster, moving them as a doctor might against the flesh of a worried patient. He was whispering too, words that Sean couldn’t fathom, though he recognised the tenderness in the delivery of them.