Something You Are

by Hanna Jameson

  I wondered how he would know that if he weren’t telling the truth.

  Keeping my eyes on his face, I gave the IV line another tug.

  ‘Kyle told you?’

  ‘He was… distraught. Matt would have hidden it but Kyle panicked, came running to me. Stupid boy, he should have known I would send them on their way. I found it almost insulting that they would ask for my help over such a petty domestic dispute.’

  ‘What did Kyle say?’

  ‘I don’t think he was lying. He said they were arguing in the car. Apparently she had got rid of the child, and Matt reacted badly. He was convinced it was his, to the point of delusion… as Kyle put it. It escalated and when they got out of the car, she said some things that incensed him and he shot her.’

  As I ran through the scene in my head, he sighed.

  ‘Stupid, impetuous behaviour.’

  ‘Impetuous…’ I looked at him, grimacing as a spasm of pain crossed behind my eyes. ‘Shooting a sixteen-year-old girl is impetuous?’

  He shrugged. ‘Extremely. But then I should never have trusted them to hide it properly. Kyle especially was weak. It was only a matter of time before I could see him tearing up the floorboards to reveal the beating of her hideous heart…’

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  He grinned at me, mocking my ignorance, and continued. ‘Disguising it as a sexual assault was so crude. Disgusting.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this? What’s in it for you?’ I tugged on the IV line again, harder.

  ‘Well, you’ll leave me alone. Not that it hasn’t been fun, Nic, but I could do without the trouble.’

  A trickle of blood ran down my arm but he didn’t notice. So long as he kept his hands where I could see them I had estimated I could either make a run for it, or deal with him before the nutcase outside heard anything.

  I gritted my teeth against the headache. ‘OK… So where’s your proof?’

  ‘Where’s your faith?’

  ‘Are you fucking joking?’

  I believed him. I believed him more readily than I had believed Matt. Everything that Daisy had said fell into place with his story. It made sense, whether he was going to kill me or not.

  ‘Who do you believe?’ One of his hands came off his knees and into his pocket.

  It was too late to make a difference. I tightened my grip on the IV with a shaking hand, ignoring the blood, ready to rip it out.

  ‘Is Brinks dead?’ I asked.

  The voice that answered came from behind me.

  ‘I suspect a broken arm and fractured collarbone.’

  I lashed out, instinctively, to my right.

  Tristan caught my wrist, and gently waved a clear bottle. ‘Careful, this is highly corrosive. Wouldn’t want to spill it.’

  Mackie’s vacant eyes…

  I couldn’t stop watching the bottle, so close to my face. It was the first time I’d been able to take a good look at him and I was surprised. Tristan did look like a medical student; wiry, bespectacled, young and baby-faced but with an intellectual’s frown.

  He dropped my arm and peered at my head. ‘Just checking your stitches… Oh, and that’s going to scar, if you rip it out like that.’

  I wiped the blood away, and when I touched my forehead I could feel the faint ridges in the spot where it had hit Brinks’s front door. I felt short of breath, as if I was having an anxiety attack.

  ‘If you’re going to kill me,’ I said, holding the crook of my arm, ‘can you just get it over and done with?’

  ‘You think I’d waste my expertise on a corpse?’ He looked at me with disdain and wheeled the drip out of the way so that he could scrutinize my stitches more closely. ‘Can you hold still?’

  I jerked my head away from him. ‘Can you get a bedside manner?’

  I heard Hudson laugh. ‘It would be more trouble to kill you.’

  ‘You killed Mackie.’

  ‘I don’t have time for traitors, plus you’re more useful to me… I’m counting on you to find Matt first. I’ve heard you have your ways.’

  I glanced at Tristan.

  Hudson leant forwards. ‘I don’t want to be enemies, Nic. I don’t like making enemies.’

  My stitches twinged whenever I tried to frown. If I agreed with him, at least for now, he might let me go. I remembered my bag, left at Brinks’s house, and sat up.

  ‘I need my bag,’ I said. ‘And my car.’

  ‘We have your bag. Tris will drive you back.’

  I dared to feel relief as the idea of there being a tomorrow, and a next week, began to materialize in my mind. ‘Well, then I’d like to go now, please.’

  ‘Do you think I’m telling the truth?’

  ‘It makes sense.’ I couldn’t bring myself to agree wholeheartedly. ‘As long as I can move back home without any more interesting mail.’

  Tristan was indicating that he wanted to check the IV line, and I held out my arm.

  ‘You need rest and an ice-pack,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t fucking say?’ I replied.

  Hudson smiled. ‘I’m glad we’re on the same wavelength.’

  It took almost forty-five minutes to drive back to Brinks’s house, and for most of it I was blindfolded. Neither of us spoke until I could see again, and when I caught my reflection in the rear-view mirror I was almost luminous.

  ‘Why did you drop out of medical school?’ I asked.

  Silence.

  ‘Did you get convicted of something?’

  He craned his neck to read a road sign and didn’t reply.

  ‘Just wondered…’

  It puzzled me that someone who had had the chance of a real profession had ended up here, with me. I wondered how he had fucked everything up.

  ‘What makes you think I dropped out?’ he said.

  I looked at him and he was smiling to himself, out through the windscreen. He had an odd, slightly autistic way of speaking.

  ‘How did you meet Felix?’ I asked.

  Brinks’s house came into sight.

  ‘I’ll drop you here,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t really be driving.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks, I’ll be fine.’ I opened the door before the car had even stopped.

  ‘Wait.’

  I turned back; he was holding out an A4 envelope.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Your proof. I took them just in case.’

  I took it off him and he reached over and shut the passenger door without a word. As I tried to say something the car pulled away. Not once had he bothered to meet my eyes.

  I didn’t look at the envelope until I got back to the flat. For a while I just sat down, without even taking off my coat and shoes. Then I stood up, pulled my suitcase down and left it lying open on my bed. When Mark came in I was folding shirts.

  He stood in the doorway and went to say something about the suitcase, when his gaze alighted on me.

  ‘Fucking state of you!’ he exclaimed.

  I was too tired to explain. ‘Walked into a door.’

  ‘Are they stitches?’ He came forwards, peering at my face.

  I held out the unopened envelope.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Don’t know, proof. You look first, I can’t…’ I shook my head, which was still aching. ‘I almost don’t want to know any more.’

  He took the envelope and I avoided his concern by continuing to pack.

  Taking the hint, he sat down and opened it.

  After a few moments of pretending to be absorbed by a blazer, I heard him take a breath.

  ‘What were you expecting to see?’ he said.

  ‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’d give it a solid twelve out of ten.’

  ‘Fuck…’ I took off my coat, sat down and held out my hand for the contents. ‘Go on, hit me.’

  When he didn’t reply I looked at him; he was staring at my shirt. I had forgotten it was covered in bloodstains, along with my forearms. There was also a bruise fro
m the IV line.

  ‘Mark, it’s fine, it’s not even mine,’ I said.

  He raised his eyebrows and then handed me the A4 photos with a grimace. ‘How’s a bit of casual necrophilia in the afternoon?’

  The first photo was taken from behind a metal structure. It looked as if they were still at the docks. Matt and Kyle were dragging a body towards the boot of a car, a body wearing a black and white striped top and boots. I could only see Matt’s back but Kyle was crying.

  The second and Emma was on the ground, between them, the bullet-hole in her forehead turned in the direction of the camera. Matt had a gun in his hand and was making some sort of gesture. Next photo he was undoing his jeans. I couldn’t see his expression and I didn’t want to.

  As he was fucking her he had a hand around her jaw, watching her face as if she were still alive.

  I looked away for a second, cleared my throat and continued.

  Fast-forward through the pictures and Kyle was on his knees, at gunpoint, sobbing, between her legs. Emma was still facing the camera, impassive, dead, with her dad’s eyes. Matt was looking at his watch, only half watching the gun he was pointing at Kyle.

  The last shot and Matt was caught, mid-kick, the toe of his shoe flying towards her stomach, her jeans lying discarded next to the car. It was the only shot where I could see him properly, but his face seemed empty. He didn’t look as if he had even broken into a sweat.

  Kyle was sitting on the ground by the car, his knees pulled into his chest, still crying. Making him an accomplice guaranteed his silence.

  ‘He asked me where my faith was,’ I said, snorting. ‘Jesus… So Felix Hudson was actually telling the truth.’

  I looked at the photo of Matt, trousers around his ankles, hand around her jaw, and immediately started fantasizing about how slowly I was going to kill him. As I turned them face down and gave them back to Mark, I could feel my face contorting with disgust.

  Nothing would ever make me look at the photos again.

  Mark put them back in the envelope and smiled. ‘Oh, you gonna “kill him dead”.’

  ‘“Dead man walking here.”’

  ‘So we can go home?’

  ‘Soon as you pack.’

  He reclined, leaning back on his elbows. ‘Are you gonna tell me whose blood that is?’

  ‘“I killed Paul Allen”’ – I grinned, throwing in three pairs of jeans – ‘“with an axe.”’

  ‘Touché. Your business.’

  31

  I was surprised Edie agreed to see me. Either she didn’t hold grudges for very long, or was just curious as to what I had to say. She met me in a bar not far from our old flat; it was nice to have moved back, even if I still found myself on the lookout for Tristan from time to time.

  I expected to be waiting for a while but she wasn’t late, for once. She was wearing a huge pair of sunglasses and the same shoes that she had thrown at me last time.

  ‘Someone got better aim than me?’ she remarked, brushing her fingertips across the bruise on my forehead.

  ‘Girls just line up to throw shoes at my head.’

  ‘That’s what I like to hear.’ She sat down and picked up the glass of red wine that I had ordered. ‘Thanks, babe. We’re not being watched, are we?’

  ‘No, Jesus… Look, I know you have no reason to believe me but I’m not some informant. The guy was a source, I paid him for info, not the other way around. You think I don’t make enough money without doing that?’

  For a while she just watched me over the rim of the glass; then she took the sunglasses off. She didn’t look as if she was angry, or was going to cut the conversation off and walk away. Instead, she smiled at me.

  ‘Sid said you came round. Well, he didn’t say your name but I guessed it was you.’

  ‘I promise I wouldn’t have hurt Scott.’

  ‘No, I know you wouldn’t. Sid didn’t, so he was pretty mad… But does this mean you have something for me?’

  I took the DVDs out of my coat and passed them across the table.

  ‘That’s all of them,’ I said.

  ‘For sure?’

  ‘Certain. You don’t have to pay me. Let’s just call it an apology, for being stupid enough to get myself caught on camera in the first place.’

  ‘You’re not the only one who’s been stupid enough to get caught on camera.’ She put them in her handbag, smiling. ‘Thanks. I mean it.’

  ‘Scott’s clever.’

  ‘Yeah, he is.’

  ‘Does he read a lot?’

  She shrugged and sipped her wine. ‘God knows. Maybe it’s the wonders of the internet? Kids can get at anything nowadays.’

  I thought of the walls of books, shelf upon shelf, and wondered how she couldn’t know that. Sidney had probably been right, it made no difference whether it was her son or her car. I had known that at the time, but it was too late now; it wasn’t as if I could take them back.

  ‘Hey, something weird happened last night,’ she said. ‘This girl was in the club asking for you…’

  ‘Another one wanting to throw a high heel at me?’

  ‘No, I’m serious, she was called Daisy. Weird name… little blonde thing.’

  My first instinct was to laugh. ‘Daisy? Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah, blonde, doesn’t wear much, going into every bar round the West End asking everyone if they knew a Nic Caruana because she needed to speak to you. She said she’d been looking for two days.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah, just going from place to place.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘You haven’t got some poor girl into trouble, have you?’

  ‘What? No, no, not at all. Did she say what it was about?’

  I couldn’t make sense of the image; Daisy, walking from bar to bar and accosting everyone she met, for two days. I could believe it of her. She seemed crazy enough, bloody-minded enough.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Edie said. ‘You don’t think I’d tell someone I know you personally? I kicked her out.’

  ‘Damn…’

  ‘You know her then? This Daisy?’

  ‘Yeah, I…’ I realized I had started standing up, and forced myself back down. ‘Yeah, I know her.’

  ‘Am I keeping you?’

  I grinned. ‘You jealous?’

  ‘She wasn’t a natural blonde.’

  This time I did stand up. ‘Sorry, I’d stay but this is really important.’

  ‘I’m intrigued.’ She stood up also and shook my hand. ‘Thank you for these, Nic, and I hope she’s worth it.’

  ‘She’s a mouthy little shite,’ I said, as I moved around the table towards the door.

  ‘Aren’t all the best women?’

  I didn’t know what she wanted. I could only imagine that it was something to do with Matt and Kyle. As I ran up to the familiar front door, it occurred to me that I had wanted to come back anyway.

  She answered the door with a roll of the eyes and dragged me inside by the sleeve of my coat. ‘Well, you took your merry time, I’ve got blisters on my fucking heels!’

  I stared at her. ‘Have you actually been looking for me for two days?’

  ‘Well…’ She shrugged. ‘You said West End, right? I figured you’d have to have gone out for a drink sometime but you know what, no one knows you. You didn’t give me some fake name, did you?’

  ‘No, sorry, that’s just what they’re meant to say.’

  ‘Ha! Man of fucking mystery!’ She punched my arm, swaying a little as she walked away from me into the living room and picked up one of the many half-drunk bottles I could see scattered about. ‘I’m meant to be impressed, eh? You want a drink? I have… cider and… cider, with vodka?’

  ‘It’s midday.’

  ‘Suit yourself. I ran out of brown, right. It sucks.’

  With practised balance, she dropped to the floor, cross-legged, and lit a cigarette. She was wearing an oversized white shirt with a belt and red leg-warmers around her shins.

  ‘Why were you looking for me?�
�

  She laughed to herself, brushing her hair out of her eyes so she could take a drag. ‘You think I’m joking, but I really did just go down all the roads, asking random people, going into bars and asking the barmen… Dense of me really, I mean, this is fucking London.’

  ‘You found me though.’ I bent down, trying to meet her eyes. ‘Hey, why did you want to find me?’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ she said, picking up her cider again and tapping ash into the tray by the sofa. ‘I know that most people think I am, cos of how I dress or how I didn’t finish college or anything, but I wanted to say that I’m fucking not. All right?’

  I waited for her to stop drinking, and sat down on the floor with her. There were shadows under her eyes and her skin was blotchy with alcohol.

  ‘You think Kyle and Matt killed her, don’t you? I mean, I know you haven’t said that, but that is why you’re so interested in them, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She pulled a face and concentrated too hard on her next drag. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Certain. Well, Matt killed her. Kyle was an accomplice, he helped cover it up.’

  She nodded, quite violently, and kept nodding for a while. It was impressive, how well she took the confirmation, but she had never struck me as someone who would cry.

  ‘And Meds?’ she said.

  ‘I suspect Matt worked out that he had spoken to me.’

  ‘Shit… Was it over her getting rid of the kid?’

  ‘Apparently. Well, Matt did it, and I think that’s why.’

  She fiddled with one of her leg-warmers. ‘I really encouraged her, like, “Get rid of it, girl, you’re too young.” She was mega torn-up about it… I don’t know if she would have kept the thing if we hadn’t been so fucking hardline.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘Well, who knows?’

  ‘No, Daisy, look at me… It’s not.’

  Her eyes moved from my face to the mantelpiece behind me, scanning her array of figurines.

  ‘I know where they are,’ she said. ‘Kyle called by the other day. He doesn’t know I talked to you but he was picking up stuff.’ She reached into the breast pocket of her shirt and handed me a Post-it. ‘I wrote down the address as soon as he was gone; I’d have forgotten it otherwise. I have to drop round some money of his when the drugs sell on.’