What You Pay For

by Claire Askew

  ‘Hello, Nella,’ he said.

  Birch went blind. The high wind had started up again, only now it was inside her head, it was all she could hear.

  ‘Charlie,’ she heard herself say, and then everything was gone.

  Wednesday

  Birch sat up. She’d been lying on her kitchen floor. She didn’t know why. The light was on above her, scalding white: it reminded her of the banks of lights in the hospital where she’d had to take her mother all those times. So bright. All the lights in the house were on, in fact. It was dark outside. And out there in the dark, something was looking for her. Something wanted to get in.

  Someone was in the room with her. Birch looked up. Her mother was sitting on top of one of the kitchen cabinets, swinging her legs. She looked healthy, strong, younger than Birch herself. The cabinets were impossibly high: they made Birch feel small, like Alice in Wonderland in the court of the Queen of Hearts. Her mother looked at her.

  ‘Why are you lying on the floor?’ She was laughing.

  Birch remembered, but only as she said it. ‘I fainted,’ she said. ‘Because I thought Charlie was here. There was a man here, and he had Charlie’s voice. When he turned round he had Charlie’s face, too. Didn’t you see him?’

  Her mother’s smile disappeared. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said, but the voice that came out of her mouth was Birch’s own. ‘Haven’t you always told me that Charlie’s dead? Charlie’s dead. Charlie’s dead.’

  It became a taunt, her mother’s voice shrinking to that of a petty schoolgirl, singsong in its mocking.

  ‘Charlie’s dead! Charlie’s dead! You always told me Charlie was dead!’

  ‘Maybe I was wrong, Mum.’ Birch had to raise her voice above her mother’s chant, which looped back and forth like an old record with a scratch. ‘I might have been wrong. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Helen?’

  Someone else was speaking now. Her mother was still chanting, swinging her legs, battering her heels against the coated MDF doors of the cupboards. But the new voice was louder.

  ‘Helen. Helen.’

  Birch put her hands over her ears.

  ‘Nella. Please.’

  Birch sat up. She’d been lying on her kitchen floor. She didn’t know why. Then she turned her head, and saw a terrible, frightening man. A man who looked so like her little brother that she couldn’t look at him for long. A man with tattoos all over his hands. A man who looked like he might be able to bodily lift her and, if he wanted to, break her in two. A man who had her biggest carving knife in his hand, pulled out from under the dishwasher. And now that man had the audacity to speak to her in her brother’s voice.

  ‘Nella. Oh fuck. Thank God.’

  He was kneeling about three feet away – far enough that he didn’t have to touch her. His face was a mask of pain: he pitied her, she could see that, but it was as though he were behind glass, forbidden to come any closer. He looked abject, such a big man folded down onto his knees, squashed into the narrow gap of the galley kitchen. Such a big man. Birch’s mind refused to wrap around the sheer bulk of him. This man who was trying so hard to look like Charlie. But Charlie was never this . . . macho.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah.’ The man who was and was not Charlie looked away then, and lifted a hand to rub at the back of his huge neck. ‘Um. You passed out. I’m sorry, Nella. I didn’t mean to freak you out that much.’

  ‘Fuck,’ she said. She put her hands on the lino and slithered up onto her knees, then stood. Her head buzzed. She set one hip against the worktop, and teetered there.

  The man who was in her kitchen, the tattooed man who looked like Charlie, unfolded himself as she did. He held his free hand towards her, palm up, as though trying to stop traffic. If she fell, he’d catch her, the gesture said. But she managed to stand, and not fall.

  ‘Just take it easy,’ he said.

  Birch felt the blood sloshing back into her head, returning to its nooks and alleyways. The fuzz at the edges of her vision began to subside. She could hear him as he said again, ‘Take it easy.’ His palm still outstretched.

  Birch looked at him. Her brother. Charlie. Her dead brother. In her kitchen, in Portobello, after fourteen years. Fourteen awful, miserable years.

  ‘Take it easy,’ she echoed. ‘Take it, fucking, easy? Are you fucking kidding me?’

  Charlie closed his eyes. ‘Nella,’ he said, and she watched as bright seams of tears formed under his lashes. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

  She flew at him then. She didn’t know why, exactly: the fuzz on her vision turned the colour of blood, just like people said. She saw red. She lunged for the kitchen knife.

  Charlie was quicker: she must still have been sluggish from coming round. He tossed the knife into the stainless-steel sink. When her body hit his, she had nothing to attack with but her own fists. He allowed her one decent right hook to his cheek before easily neutralising her, in spite of their difference in height, each of her wrists locked inside his big hands, and pulled down so her elbows were pinned at her sides. Birch writhed in his grip: he was strong, but she was self-defence trained and had sparred with bigger men than him on the gym mat. For around a minute they grappled in the weird little aisle of the kitchen, battering this way and that against the cabinets, her socks making her feet skid on the flags.

  The whole time, he chanted at her: ‘Nella, I’m sorry, please. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Nella, stop. Please. I’m sorry.’

  She knew she couldn’t keep it up. She was weakened from fainting, from lack of sleep, from the adrenalin spike he’d given her breaking in – a high from which she was now plummeting.

  He could feel the rage in her subsiding, she knew. His grip on her wrists became looser. Then all at once he let go entirely, and wrapped both those huge arms around her shoulders. She let Charlie hold her up, the muscles in his arms like mooring ropes as she bent to press her face in under his chin. He pulled her body in close and crushed her there, his breath ragged in his chest. Charlie was crying.

  ‘You were dead,’ she said, and when her voice came out bubbled and spitty she realised she was crying too. ‘You were dead, we all thought you were dead, Charlie . . .’

  She could smell him, now, too. Charlie, she thought. Yes, this is Charlie. You can imitate someone’s voice, you can bear a striking resemblance . . . but there’s no faking someone’s smell. And the smell brought an onrush of old memories so vivid she wasn’t sure she could bear them. Charlie aged six, climbing into her bed to tell her, Nella, there’s a thunderstorm, and I’m not frightened but I thought you might be frightened so I’ve come to take care of you. Charlie, aged thirteen, spraying aftershave on for the first time in front of the hall mirror, and her teasing him mercilessly. Charlie, aged eighteen, blind drunk on his birthday and leaning on her as she half led, half carried him somewhere – where, she didn’t know. The memory had fractured. But she remembered that smell: his skin, warm and familiar, wrapped around her like a scarf.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nella,’ he said into her hair. ‘I’m so sorry for what I’ve put you through.’

  She had to pull away then. The memories – coursing through her, filling her with a strange, resentful warmth – were too much.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay.’

  Charlie’s arms opened, but he placed one hand on each of her shoulders, as though he still wasn’t quite sure that she wouldn’t fall down. She found herself stooping the three inches or so to match her brother’s height: it was muscle-memory, a thing she always used to do. She looked him in the face, refusing to flinch her gaze away, though every nerve in her brain seemed to be telling her to.

  She pulled a long stream of air in through her nose, in an attempt to stop crying. ‘I’m going to need you to tell me,’ she said – and she heard her own voice come out strangled and cold – ‘where the fuck you’ve been.’

  Just for a split second, Charlie smiled, but when he spoke again hi
s voice was stony, too. ‘I will, Nella. I’ll tell you everything, I promise.’ He was still holding her shoulders, and now he gave her a little shake. ‘I absolutely promise. But . . .’

  Birch followed his gaze as he looked up at the kitchen clock: 3.20 a.m.

  ‘It might take a while,’ he said.

  She shrugged out of his loose grip, and tilted her chin up. She was exhausted, she realised, but the thought of waiting to hear what Charlie had to say was utterly unbearable.

  ‘Then it’ll take a while,’ she said. ‘I want all of it. Every single fucking minute. Fourteen years. You’re going to tell me the whole thing.’

  Charlie cast his eyes down, then. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But before I do, and you maybe hate me, I just want to say . . . it’s so good to see you. I missed you.’

  He smiled, for the first time. Birch wanted to hit him and hug him all at once. She’d missed it so much, that dirty joke of a smile. It rendered her speechless.

  ‘You still look kinda . . . green, though,’ Charlie went on. ‘Go sit down, and I’ll make you a cuppa. Okay?’

  Birch raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d prefer a whisky right now,’ she said.

  Her brother flushed. ‘That’s what I was looking for,’ he said. ‘In the cupboards. I was going to sit down here, wait for you to get up in the morning. I just wanted a wee nip.’

  She smiled. She couldn’t help herself. As a student, Charlie had developed a rep for this: at house parties, if no one had opened the booze he’d brought along, he’d take it away again. He’d rifle through other people’s cupboards to find the good stuff, the hard liquor, and help himself. Looking at him was exceptionally hard: he was so much someone else, so much a stranger. But yes, as well as that, he was still Charlie.

  ‘It’s in the living room. On the floor at the end of the sofa. I needed a bevvy last night.’ She remembered the time and corrected herself. ‘Monday night. I’d had a day.’

  It occurred to Charlie: she saw it happen.

  ‘The anniversary,’ he said, ‘of the night I left.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She had no other words for him right then.

  For a few moments they stood and looked at each other, the clock clicking its tongue. She could feel herself swaying slightly, the blood that had rushed out of her head still trickling back.

  ‘Okay,’ Birch said at last. ‘Glasses are in the top cupboard. First one you looked in, the one that creaks.’

  He grinned at her, and she had to turn away. Somehow, she made it to the kitchen door, but then turned.

  ‘Charles Arthur Birch,’ she said. ‘Don’t you fucking dare go anywhere, you hear me?’

  Charlie didn’t reply, but he lifted one big hand to his temple, and – with a solemn look on his face – gave a salute. She heard him flick on the kettle as she lit new tealights on the fireplace. Behind her, he turned off the kitchen light and the house became half lit, eerie once again.

  ‘What’s with the dark?’ she called back. He was still messing with crockery in there, and she knew she’d made him jump: she heard a teaspoon rattle on the counter.

  ‘Keeping a low profile,’ he said, watching her as he manoeuvred into the room. He nodded at the mug he was carrying. ‘I thought maybe coffee? Better for staying up late.’

  Birch stepped away from the fireplace, took the mug from him. She wanted to cry. He’d remembered how she took her coffee, after all these years.

  ‘Wee dram as well,’ he said, pointing to the whisky, and setting down two glasses. ‘Like you asked.’

  Birch wasn’t sure what to do with herself as he settled: she didn’t want to sit on the sofa next to him, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Knowing it was weird to be standing there over him, she moved past the coffee table and put herself in the uncomfortable rocking chair she never used. It was beside the fire: diagonally across from him now, she could see the moving shadows those fake flames cast on his face.

  Charlie was holding his own whisky between both hands. He’d poured himself at least a quadruple measure.

  ‘Talisker,’ he said, nodding down at the tumbler. ‘Nice.’

  ‘Charlie.’ His name was like a soor ploom in her mouth: she wanted to turn it over and over, as though trying to outrun its sourness. ‘You said . . . why are you keeping a low profile?’

  He turned away from the whisky and looked at her. It hit her then that he carried no bag, was wearing nothing more than a light coat over his hoodie. He looked tired, and as though he might not have washed. Why had he come in the middle of the night – why hadn’t he rung the doorbell at 8 a.m. when she’d got up, or phoned the office?

  ‘You’re in trouble.’ It wasn’t a question. Looking at him then, she knew it.

  Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose, hard, between thumb and forefinger. This was a grown-up mannerism, one she didn’t recognise.

  ‘You could say that,’ he said. ‘You could say I’m in some deep shit, Nella.’

  He squeezed his eyes closed, then released his grip. ‘It’s basically the same deep shit,’ he said, ‘that’s had me AWOL for fourteen years. Or at least . . . it’s a variation on the deep shit theme, you know?’

  Birch felt her face harden. ‘No, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

  Her brother took a deep breath. She watched his shoulders swell and then subside, like a wave.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  She waited.

  ‘About this time two days ago you and your lot ran a dawn raid, codenamed Operation Citrine. An informant told you that Glasgow gangland bastard extraordinaire Solomon Carradice was bringing a small flotilla of unauthorised craft into the harbour at Granton. Boats small enough to get into that wee, tidal, out-of-the-way harbour with its long dark walkways and its weekend pleasure boats. You guys have suspected for a while that Solomon’s been using alternative entry points to bring shit into this country without detection. Glasgow’s a pain in the arse these days, too many hoops to jump, regulations, officialdom – not to mention undercover polis hanging about. So you reckoned he’d been using smaller ports. Oban, Eyemouth. Fucking Ullapool. But Granton’s Edinburgh, near the action. Bring a crab-boat full of smack in there and you can have some kid in Muirhouse peddling it before the morning’s out. And Solomon’s getting old. He’s not really one for patience these days.’

  Birch realised she was holding her breath. Charlie had information on Operation Citrine that even she wasn’t party to.

  ‘So anyway,’ he went on. ‘Your informant tells you that this is the test run, this is the first crack at a Granton landing, so Solomon’s got his biggest boys out there making sure it goes smoothly. He’s out there himself, even, which is rare: he’s standing out in the cold with a walkie and binoculars. He’s waiting for the all-clear. The whole gang is there. Drivers with vans waiting to unload the gear. Foreign associates with skin in the game. Dealers with scales in their back pockets wanting first dibs. This shipment’s mainly flakka: you know? Bath salts, it also gets called. Sometimes gravel. It’s massive in Russia, and basically unchecked. There’s even an idiom.’

  Charlie said something in Russian. Birch blinked. One of her mother’s theories had been that he must have gone to Russia, like he always wanted to. Birch never allowed her mother to believe that he’d just up and go, never contact them, and never come back . . . but hearing his fluent tongue now, she wondered if, in fact, Mum had been right.

  ‘It translates,’ he was saying, ‘to there is as much salt in Siberia as there is snow. Salt meaning bath salts. The country is awash with it – it’s bigger there than heroin. Of course that’s right up Solomon’s street, and he wants a piece of it.’

  Birch held up her hands, overwhelmed. ‘Charlie, wait,’ she said. ‘How the hell do you know about Operation Citrine?’

  His eyebrows knitted. Under his left eye, a scar she couldn’t bear to look at twitched like an insect. He was looking at her as though she were stupid.

  ‘I’m the informant, Nella,’ he said. ‘I am Operati
on Citrine.’

  I found out later that Toad had been cutting corners with me. He wasn’t supposed to need the help of a translator – he was supposed to do the shit he did himself. But he’d got out of his depth. His English wasn’t good enough and he didn’t want them to know. So he’d been outsourcing his written communication to me and hoping no one would catch on.

  Turns out, even a thug can spot the difference when a middle-aged Russian dude whose phrases usually sound ever-so-slightly lost in translation starts writing English like a native, overnight. Toad’s a sly bastard, and a hard bastard, and weirdly he’s also what the Glaswegians might call a pure sound cunt . . . but in many ways, he’s not the sharpest tool in the box. He’s been in the game a long time, since the days before email and smartphones and cryptocurrencies. Toad can remember when it was all about driving a nicked car with the boot full of contraband cigarettes across some rural European border crossing. The kind of guy who still gets his porn from magazines. And that was essentially what fucked up my whole life.

  One of the higher-ups caught wind that Toad was getting help with his homework. He had to fess up he’d been paying me – from his own pocket, mind, he wasn’t stupid – to help him with sensitive correspondence relating to just about every nefarious racket that Solomon and his boys had running. But Toad was from the vory v zakone, the top tier of Russian ex-cons, and commanded an impressive network of bandity across the Russian Federation and Eastern Europe. He was a trusted guy whose name opened doors. Lucky for him – and me – or we’d likely have found ourselves at the bottom of some deep, rarely visited stretch of the good old Clyde. They couldn’t lose him. But something had to be done about this twenty-year-old kid who was running around with no real loyalty to anyone and a laptop full of damning evidence.