Loose Ends

by Susan Moody

  He stopped for a second to listen, then ran on: they were still coming for him and he cursed himself for leaving his gun at the boarding house. With that in his hand, he could have easily picked them off, but he was so close to fulfilling his dreams that he hadn’t wanted to risk being picked up by the rozzers and be done for illegal possession. In this town, they all knew his face: if they caught him on the streets they’d have him for sure. Bloody hell. Everything was in place, everything fucking sorted; he’d got the dream house, the dream bank account, even the dream woman. And then he’d been stupid enough to believe what the Big Boss told him, fucking little dwarf in his fucking cowboy boots, stuck all over with bits of blue stone and chicken bones (‘No danger at all, me old son, you’ll be gone again before they even realize you was here.’), and even more stupid to drive over to visit Mum, explain that he didn’t know when he’d be back, but soon, once again, thanks for everything, Mum, take care. They must have followed him down from Edinburgh, only explanation, he’d been fucking stupid not to check, and of course the little wanker knew all about the Manor, probably caved in on one of his Dad’s visits, knowing it was ‘admit everything or enjoy your time inside, son, long as you last’. Perhaps the Big Boss thought he’d cave in himself if the cops caught up with him, as if he would. Fuck him, he’d even stuck tape over those stones at the entrance, hidden the name, Stefan must have peeled it back on one of his visits to the girl, and they’d have traced the purchase back to him, started asking themselves where he got the cash, had a closer look at the books . . . Oh bloody hell. Still, he’d been in worse holes, had closer shaves.

  He wondered who could have tipped them off about Mum – someone must have, that was for sure, unless they’d been following him since he got back, because if there was one thing he’d never let on about, it was Mum’s address, not to mention the boarding house; most times he stayed at the Grand, it was only now and then he went to Cora’s, just to fool them, and if he ever got his hands on whoever had grassed him up . . .

  He pounded down Spifford Road, a hundred yards to go and round the corner, and he’d be heading straight for the footbridge. Already the air was thick with the smell of decay and leaves and green slime which always came off the canal at this time of night, at this time of year, when there weren’t many cars around, and he could hear the wind moaning in the poplars which lined one side of the towpath. He reached the corner, turned right, and ran across the road, ducking down into the alley between two of the houses. He had a big advantage over them, he knew this place like the back of his hand, being in and out of these streets since he was a kid, first when he was still ignorant enough to be doing it the hard way with his paper round, then, when he wised up, as a runner for that stupid Irish prick, ‘Four Eyes’ O’Grady. Four Eyes, I ask you, whoever heard of a dealer wearing specs? You couldn’t take the guy seriously; he could’ve afforded contact lens any day of the week, never seemed to realize that it made him look like a proper woofter. He’d enjoyed that, dodging through the backstreets, down the alleyways, kicking over the dustbins as he went, too young to be nicked, always a step or two ahead of the cops, sometimes on his bike, sometimes on foot and once he’d delivered it was back again to Four Eyes for another errand and a handful of money.

  He tore out of the alley into Melford Street and straight across into another one, the smell of the canal receding for a moment then returning full force when the narrow passage turned at right angles and there it was ahead of him, just across the road, the glare of the neon lights sending orange ripples across the filthy water. He wouldn’t drink a glass of that for a thousand quid, he thought, maybe not even a million, though with that much cash you’d be able to afford the top specialists to cure the effects of the muck which went down your throat. He’d seen a dead dog floating down there one morning, swollen and matted, one blank eye facing the sky, and thought what a way to die, what a horrible end.

  And then, as he came to the opening on to Canal Side Lane, a black shadow stepped out from behind the side wall and stood there, blocking his way. Bloody fucking hell . . . He had to think quickly because he only had two choices; he could either barge on through the bastard at the mouth of the alley and take his chances, or he could run back and do the same thing at the other end, because you could bet your grandmother’s tits that the other one was there, waiting for him.

  Cornered like the proverbial rat . . . He didn’t hesitate but pushed on, hoping to catch the guy by surprise so that he would at least pause. He held his full weight poised to knock the fucker out of the way, which he did, though not before the guy’s arm had thrust at his upper leg. He kicked out, at the same time smashing his fist in the other man’s face, heard the crack of breaking bone and a grunt as the guy dropped to his knees, clutching at his nose. It was the older one – for a moment he was tempted to turn and race for the other end of the alley; the other guy worked for the Big Boss only occasionally – driver, or something – and he personally knew him to be a fucking wimp, unlikely to stand in his way. Matter of fact, it astonished him that he had summoned up enough courage to dare chase him, as though the threatening pressure he’d always applied – only way he’d managed to keep his head down for so long – no longer prevailed. Funny that, and then it came to him that maybe it wasn’t the boss, fucking Carlos de Poncing Doodah y Macaroni or whatever, but the Big Boss himself who was behind this, tidying up loose ends. In which case . . .

  A tearing pain bit into his leg as he ran across the road and on to the canal path, limping now; bastard must have stuck a knife into his thigh. He pushed one hand into his pocket, wincing as he felt the wound, trying to judge how serious it was. A lot of blood, he thought, but he’d survive, not a severed artery or anything, and then felt the rounded shape of his key ring. Christ, if by any chance they caught up with him, they wouldn’t rest until they’d forced him to say where the money was. His mouth twisted at the thought of the pain they could inflict with one of those thin blades they always carried. He pulled out the key ring, slippery with blood now, and jogged on to the grass verge, dropped it into a clump of grass – he’d come back tomorrow and retrieve it – and then he was taking the four shallow steps two at a time on to the footbridge, breath coming gaspingly now, but full of elation because he’d outwitted the cunts, they hadn’t expected him to keep coming, and he was pounding towards the last yard or two before he reached the other side of the footbridge when something grabbed his hair, an arm came round his neck like an iron bar, forcing him to his knees; his head was yanked backwards, neck stretched. In those final moments, the future he’d envisioned for himself rushed past him like a series of flash-forwards – the yacht moored at Cowes, the fancy sports car, Mum on his arm at Ascot, kids running across a wide green lawn, respect of the community – then there was a blade flashing like a slice of melon in the carroty glow of the tall neon lamps, the water frog-green through the cracks of the planks. Was this how it was going to end? He saw Mum sitting across the table from him, smoking her fags, laughing at something he’d said. ‘You’re a real man,’ she used to say, ‘a real man, not like your Dad,’ even after he was sent down, visiting every week, never missed, and then they were kicking him as he clutched at his leg, kicking his head so that little lights exploded like Catherine wheels behind his eyes, stamping on his fingers so the bones cracked like walnuts, kicking his kidneys – he’d be pissing blood for a month at this rate. He tried to scream – where were the fucking cops when you needed them? – but no sound came out of his mouth. He could smell sweat and piss and that god-awful aftershave they wore, stank like a pox-doctor’s clerk, something the whores wore in that Quito brothel, which is probably where they bought the filthy stuff in the first place.

  He found some strength, kicked out, caught one of them on the knee, heard a high-pitched squeal. The younger one . . . good. When this was over, the jerk would wish he’d never been born. He’d already done his brother, soon as he got back – can’t have a loose cannon running round, the Big Boss h
ad said, so he’d waited for Stefan near that wine bar he liked, already chatting up some other tasty bit as though the last one hadn’t landed them all in trouble, hung about until he came out then caught him round the back of the head with an iron bar, dragged him round the back, chucked the weapon in the canal immediately afterwards and was off back to Cora’s.

  He managed to get to his feet and tried to run down the steps in a half-crouch, pain burning in his gut, blood pouring down his leg and into his shoe, and then they were on him again and he knew there was no hope left, no fucking hope at all, as they snapped his head back and the blade slid once more across his throat. Mum! he tried to scream. Mum, like he was a kid again, but the word wouldn’t come out, only a bubbly sound.

  Mum! Was she OK, had the bastards got to her, had they used their knives on her to get her to tell them where he was, not that she knew? Oh Jesus God . . . the old girl butchered in her kitchen, that was Mum – it was Mum, wasn’t it? He’d kill them for it, he’d fucking kill them, mad foreign bastards – bastards! They were going through his pockets, removing everything, and his penultimate thought was they won’t find the key and even if they did . . . As one of them swung a baseball bat at his skull, over and over again, until his face was a crushed mess of blood and bone and teeth, and as they got him by the arms and legs and started swinging him from side to side, they never knew that his final conscious thought was please not in the fucking canal.

  Dora

  ‘Morning, Dr Lennox, how are you?’

  ‘Just fine, Mrs Harding, and you?’

  ‘Lovely, thanks. How’s the baby?’

  ‘Still a bit new, really.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘We decided to call her Anna-Margarita.’

  ‘Ooh, that’s ever so nice. And Olga and Alexei not jealous of her?’

  ‘Not as far as we can tell.’

  Mrs Harding watched him walk further along the towpath. That poor wife of his, awful about her mother being murdered like that, all over the papers, it was, sliced to pieces if you believed what you read, couldn’t trust them journalists further than you could throw them, in Dora’s opinion. Mafia, that’s what it was all down to, people dying left, right and centre; that chap found outside a wine bar, what was it, months ago now, skull split, so they said, then his father, someone had done away with him too, and then that gang boss further south, big trial there’d been, he’d gone down for twenty years, though it probably wasn’t long enough for someone like that – still it was some time ago, well over a year, more like fifteen months, and there’d been peace and quiet up here since then, though they’d never found out who that was floating in the canal all those months ago – Mrs Harding knew that for a fact, because she’d rung the police station herself to ask, seeing as how she was the one called the police in the first place.

  ‘Have a bit of sponge, Cora, I made it for you special.’

  ‘Mmm . . . not bad, though you always was a bit heavy-handed when it comes to beating.’

  ‘Do well in one of them terrorist prison camps, then,’ quipped Dora, while Cora passed over a plate of fancy biscuits, saying, ‘Try one of these – one of my Guests bought them for me.’ Cora always called the people who stopped at her tiny B&B her Guests, audibly including the capital G.

  ‘Lovely.’ Dora’s fingers hovered over the selection – ginger nut, creme sandwich, milk chocolate digestive, caramel waffle, lemon crisp and lovely sugary Nice – which wobbled in front of her, Cora’s hands being none too steady these days. Personally, Dora put it down to the Demon Drink, a glass or so every now and then never did anyone any harm, but judging by the empties in the kitchen, Cora was going at it like a sailor, if it was sailors who went at it, though she always insisted that she was under the doctor for it because he thought the tremor might be the onset of Parkinson’s and a bit of sympathy would be nice, chance would be a fine thing. Dora thought Parkinson’s was unlikely – you didn’t have any facial expression with Parkinson’s, did you? Cora had far too much expression, most of it nasty, in Dora’s opinion, still they were twins, after all, and now that their big sisters, Thora and Nora, were gone, not to mention their husbands, each other was all either of them had. ‘I’ll have the lemon crisp.’

  ‘Why’d you choose that, you know it’s my favourite?’ Cora said, sniffing, and pulled the plate out of Dora’s reach before plonking a Garibaldi in front of her, not Dora’s biscuit of choice – they used to call them squashed-fly biscuits when they were little and she’d never really fancied them after that.

  ‘I’ll leave the cake for you when I go,’ Dora said. ‘Can’t stay long this time, Livingstone’s been a bit off colour,’ and while she waited for Cora’s inevitable response when Livvy came into the conversation (‘You and that dog’), she opened her big black handbag (bought on sale, must be six years ago, and still going strong, which just bore out what Dora always said, that it pays to buy good stuff) and searched around for the bus timetable, pulling out her purse, her keys, a packet of menthol cigarettes (‘Ooh, Dora, you’re not still smoking, are you, give you cancer soon as look at you, thought you gave them up years ago.’) and the Quick Crossword from the Mail, which she’d cut out and folded neatly, intending to do it on the way home, the bus taking forever these days, winding through the villages and meandering all over the place. She was about to run her finger down the columns to check what time the next bus was when Cora pointed at the bunch of keys which now lay splayed on the tablecloth Cora had embroidered for her bottom drawer (Mother had insisted that they all did one). ‘Like your key ring,’ she said. ‘That’s new.’

  ‘Not really, I’ve had it at least a year now,’ Dora said. ‘Sally gave it to me,’ guiltily remembering that to all intents and purposes she’d stolen it – you could hardly call it borrowing when you didn’t know whose it was. And Cora asked if she recalled that Guest she used to have, came every now and then, very dark hair, stayed a night or two and took off again, well, he’d had a key ring just like that, she remembered the dolphin particularly because she’d gone on the coach with the Over-Sixties to one of them amusement parks, not that there’d been much amusement about it, everything cost the earth and she’d ruined a perfectly good pair of fur-trimmed ankle boots in the mud, but there’d been dolphins there, ever so nice they were, always smiling at you, not really smiling, of course, it was the way their mouths were, but anyway, this Guest – Mr Buono, he called himself; funny sort of name, but a nice sort of chap – he’d had a key ring like this one. And what’s more, Cora went on, last time he came was – oooh, months ago, more than a year, haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since, but he’d left a briefcase with her, that last time, for safe-keeping, he said, and seeing the dolphin reminded her.

  ‘Ever looked inside, Core?’ Mrs Harding asked, and Cora said of course not, what did Dora take her for? But it would be interesting to know, wouldn’t it? ‘So where is this briefcase?’ asked Dora, and her sister explained it was under her own bed. ‘And you never even tried to see what was in it, Nosey Parker like you, pull the other one,’ Dora said, ‘come off it, I know you too well.’ Cora conceded that she might have tried to open the case (must be nearly fifteen months since he was last here, now she came to think) but it had been locked and though she’d tried to prise it open with a screwdriver, she hadn’t succeeded. ‘For my own protection, of course, you never know, might have been a bomb in there, or drugs, you wouldn’t want them drug dukes after you, would you,’ at which point Dora recalled that there had been a key on the key ring she’d found in the grass more than a year ago or, more correctly, Livingstone had found, a small key which at the time she had guessed was for a suitcase or something similar.

  ‘Is it heavy?’ she asked, but Cora couldn’t really say, what with the Parkinson’s and everything, not that she got a drop of pity or consideration from anyone, especially her own family. Dora watched Sooty the cat stalking a sparrow across the grass outside the window, body elongated to twice its normal size, li
ke a telescope or something, then said why didn’t she, Dora, nip upstairs and have a look at it? Like Cora said, you didn’t want to be harbouring Mafia money or drugs unbeknownst, did you – ‘and it’s barons, Cora, not dukes.’

  ‘Why not?’ Cora shrugged and mentioned her legs, which had apparently been playing up, making climbing the stairs more of a problem than they used to be – Mum’s were the same, Dora might remember. Upstairs, Dora sniffed the stuffy air of Cora’s bedroom: mothballs, stale scent (Cora liked Chanel No. 5, which Dora found too rich, preferring Anaïs, but happy with whatever Sally or Lizzie bought for her in the Duty Free shop at Heathrow), unwashed tights and sweat (Cora had always had a problem with body odour, even as a girl) and a chair strewn with surprisingly sexy underwear. (Cora hadn’t gone and found herself a man, had she, after all these years of widowhood?) She peered under the bed, wrinkled her nose at the dust balls gathered there (at least there wasn’t a chamber pot, like Mum used to have. Goosey Goosey Gander, it used to say round the rim, half-full, like as not), pushed aside the pink marabou-feathered high-heeled slippers (when in the world would Cora ever wear those?) and pulled towards her a handsome briefcase made of soft light-brown leather. Locked, as Cora had said. Dora tried to imagine what was inside. Dozens of small cellophane packages containing a suspicious white powder, or diamonds stolen from – where was it? – Hatton Gardens in London, or bearer bonds (whatever they might be) with a face value of millions, or even souvenirs of recent grisly murders – a hank of hair here, a pair of lace knickers there, a locket containing a photograph of the victim’s boyfriend. But when she lifted it on to the bed, nothing rattled or shook. She could see the scratches on the lock where Cora had used the screwdriver and wondered what the lodger – sorry, the Guest – would say when he returned, but it had been fifteen months, seemed a long time to leave anything for safe-keeping with anyone, especially not a landlady or whatever you called a woman who ran a B&B.