‘What?’ I strode up to him and he was taller than me. ‘What?’
‘You wanna start something, do ya?’ He spat at the ground next to me. ‘Come on then!’
I stared at him, took a blade out of my pocket, yanked his head to one side by his ear and sliced the lobe of the other clean off. I felt it come loose like a sliver of beef.
He made no sound as I shoved his heavy bulk away from me and walked back to my car. It was only after I had got back into the driver’s seat and started the engine that he spotted the blood running down his shoulder. The shock on his face, as he tried to work out what I had done, almost made me laugh for a moment, before the familiar unease with my own actions kicked in. It made me calm, but it made me into someone I hadn’t wanted to become; someone who enjoyed it.
It was tempting to scrape against his van as I pulled away, but it wasn’t worth the inconvenience. I dropped the knife into the footwell and made a mental note to clean it off later.
My hands felt unsteady wrapped around the wheel.
Kyle’s death hadn’t even meant more than that van driver’s ear. Matt’s death wouldn’t have done either.
‘Dickhead,’ I said out loud as it started to rain.
*
Music was playing inside. I had come to view that as a bad sign where she was concerned. She opened the door and her cheeks were brilliantly red, as if she had just rubbed mascara off them along with the tears.
Without saying a word she took hold of my coat and pulled my lips against hers. I wanted to say no, to retain some pride, an illusion of control. But I also wanted to believe that something I did would make things better; that I could be what she wanted. Just like Pat.
The door shut. I was backed into the wall.
‘I knew you’d come.’
It should have bothered me more, but nothing felt better than her. She made it impossible to think about anything else.
I dropped my bag and my coat and pushed her back across the hallway. She pulled at the band of her trousers, smelling like strong perfume, kissing my neck, murmuring, ‘Do it like you did last time.’
I could still feel the tears on her face.
‘Hit me…’
‘What?’
‘Hit me again.’ She took hold of my face with both hands and glared at me, one of her legs entwining around mine.
‘Clare—’
‘Do it!’
‘No!’ I pulled away and took a step back.
There was a silence. I don’t know how I found the will to stay there. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, eyeing the space between us with suspicion, as if no one had ever taken a step back from her in her life.
She walked past me into the living room, I heard her looking for something, and she met me back in the doorway with a fistful of notes, waving them in my face.
‘Will this help?’
‘Jesus…’ I swatted her hand away, stung. ‘What the fuck am I to you?’
‘You’re paid to help, right?’ She started crying again, snapping at me through the tears. ‘You’re paid to hurt people and I’m asking you—’
‘Clare, this is crazy!’
‘You didn’t mind last time!’
‘No, fuck this shit.’ I turned and picked up my bag and coat. ‘Fuck you.’
‘No! No, don’t go!’ She forced herself between me and the door, standing with her back against it and sobbing. ‘Don’t you dare go! Don’t you dare!’
‘Move.’
‘No.’
‘Get out of the way!’
‘No!’
I grabbed her arm and she punched me, with surprising force. Using all my discipline, I refrained from doing the same. It was what she wanted me to do.
She pushed me, with both hands. ‘You said you could help! You said!’
‘Look, just move—’
‘What you’re paid to, right!’ She slapped me and I almost tripped over the bottom stair. ‘You do what you’re paid to! If you won’t I’ll—’
‘Stop it!’
‘I’ll—’
‘You’re being—’
This time she went for me with her nails and I caught her with a blow to the jaw in my attempt to deflect them from my face. There wasn’t much force behind it, but it was enough to make her stop. Her bottom lip started bleeding a little and she dabbed the blood away with her fingers.
I regretted it straight away, but at least the fight had left her.
‘Is that what you wanted?’ I said, shrugging. ‘Is that all you wanted me for? Well, it’s not that great, is it?’
In her eyes I could see that she was looking at a stranger. For once, something hadn’t gone the way she had wanted. From the bewilderment in her expression I could see what Mark had meant; not getting her own way was alien to her.
The shock turned into embarrassment and, wiping the blood off her lip again, she turned away from me and sat down in the living room. She pulled her legs up on to the sofa as I came in and sat down opposite her, in the exact poses we had struck on the night we had met.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘No… It’s not like I didn’t ask.’ She tried to smile. ‘You want to know a secret? Something I tried to tell you before?’
‘What?’
‘When Emma died… one of the first things I remember thinking, when I could think again…’ She hid most of her face behind her hands. ‘I thought, for a second, that I could go back. I mean… go back to how I was before. I was glad, for a second.’
As I was searching for something to say she succumbed to tears again, rubbing her eyes.
‘It was only for a second.’
‘I’m sure it’s… normal.’
I didn’t know if it was normal, if I was lying. I didn’t know what was normal by her standards any more. Everything she said made me feel sorrow for her, and frustration that I couldn’t do anything for her.
‘No, you don’t understand!’ She stood up, shaking. ‘I lost myself! I lost myself! I had a life, my life, and now I don’t know… I thought I could get it back.’
I stayed sitting, wishing there was something I could say that would be enough for her. But what she wanted was fantasy. Pat was the lifelong mediator between her and reality and she hated him for it. I didn’t know how he had done it for this long.
‘You had a life,’ I said. ‘Emma wasn’t some person who came along and stole it. You want to talk about fucking things up then, trust me, I’m an expert, but you didn’t fuck things up. I mean, what would you have done differently?’
‘I don’t even know.’ She spread her hands, almost laughing. ‘Been someone… better?’
‘Yeah, but all this didn’t happen because you had a kid.’
‘I… know,’ she breathed through the tears. ‘I know.’
Looking defeated, she turned the music off and sat down again.
‘Well, what do you want? Seriously, Clare, what can anyone fucking do? If you just told someone what you want then—’
‘I told you. I…’
The front door opened. In the time that it took for Pat to shut it again Clare had wiped her eyes and checked that her lip had stopped bleeding.
He looked at me from the doorway, pointedly, before he turned to Clare. ‘Hey, I’m just picking up some stuff, is that OK?’
She nodded, barely meeting his gaze.
‘I was just…’ I retracted any gestures with my hands, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible. ‘I was just telling Clare everything I told you.’
He didn’t take his eyes off Clare. ‘Are you all right?’
It took a while for her to remember that she wasn’t supposed to know about the pregnancy, that the last meeting between us could never have happened, and recovered well.
‘It’s a bit of a shock.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m starting to think we didn’t really know her at all, did we?’
Thank God, I thought, resting my head on my hands.
‘Are you OK to cash a cheque?’ Pat aske
d me, indicating that he was going to the kitchen. ‘I can write one out.’
I would have preferred cash but I didn’t want to contradict him on anything at this point. ‘Yeah, cheque is fine.’
‘You’re done?’ Clare turned to me sharply.
‘Not completely,’ I said. ‘I was just coming to that actually. We got one guy, but the other got away.’
‘You got him?’ She looked between me and Pat. ‘When?’
‘A couple of hours ago,’ Pat said.
‘You got him, a couple of hours ago.’ She didn’t manage to hide the expression of pure disgust that she shot in my direction. ‘That’s nice.’
Under normal circumstances I would have called her a fucking hypocrite, but with Pat there I just nodded. It seemed a strange attitude, only to advocate violence against yourself.
Pat also looked a little uncomfortable at the admission, and went to get my cheque.
‘Have you come straight from wherever you just were?’ she hissed. ‘A couple of hours ago?’
‘You didn’t seem to give a damn where I was when you called begging me to come over.’
‘You’re so self-righteous.’
‘Me?’
We both stopped talking as we heard Pat coming back. It felt more stable, more familiar, to return to this antagonism, but her agitation put me on edge. When she was like this she would do anything.
I stood up to take the cheque, and to my surprise Pat shook my hand.
‘Thanks, Nic, let me know how it goes with… the other one.’
‘No problem.’
Clare snorted to herself. ‘Are you going to group hug or do you want some time alone?’
Pat sighed. ‘Come on, Clare, what’s your problem?’
‘All this back-patting, like you’re so proud of yourselves, well you know what?’ She stood up, folding her arms with a flourish. ‘I knew all of this, I knew about it days ago, darling.’
I felt like someone had grabbed me by the throat.
Pat’s eyes narrowed. ‘How?’
‘Nic came and told me. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, we had sex.’ She grinned through a wave of her hair, partly at me, but mostly at Pat, as though she had been waiting for the perfect moment to say it. ‘And it was really good.’
34
It didn’t cross my mind to try and deny it. Even though it confirmed my guilt, my instant reaction was to move away from Pat. He was staring at Clare, who was still smiling defiantly, glowing with bizarre elation.
He turned to me, the moment I had been dreading. Not since Brinks had smashed my head open had I been so sure that someone was going to kill me.
‘You—’
‘No, not him,’ Clare cut in, taking a step forwards as if to block me from his view. ‘I wanted to.’
Pat was standing too close to the door for me to get out. All I could do was keep backing away across the room.
What the fuck was she doing?
What the fuck had she done?
Pat didn’t say anything. He tortured people without making a sound. My gun was in a bin three streets away, where I had disposed of it, and his was inside his coat.
Clare cocked her head. ‘Go on. Do something.’
With the jolt of revulsion, I realized what was going on, at the exact moment that Pat threw her to one side and lunged at me across the room.
‘No!’ she cried.
I almost grabbed the stone statue, but another ornament came to hand instead. The corner of the photo frame caught Pat’s forehead. I dropped it and made a break for the door.
‘Pat, wait!’ I heard Clare shout.
I felt him grab the back of my jacket; he threw me sideways on to the floor. I scrambled up, managed to get into the kitchen and slam the door. It slowed him down, but not much. He came crashing into the other side and forced me backwards.
He was holding his gun.
‘Don’t!’ Clare grabbed Pat’s arm but he pushed her away without looking at her.
‘Pat…’ I said, trying to get him talking.
‘Don’t fucking talk to me.’ His lip curled. ‘It took me a while, but I trusted you towards the end, I actually trusted you.’
‘Put it down, Pat!’ Clare got between us, shaking, glancing back at me. ‘Just put the gun down… Pat, it was me, it was me, it was all me, I promise, you don’t need to shoot anyone—’
‘Yeah, I bet you put up such a fucking fight,’ he sneered at me.
‘For God’s sake!’ She slapped the gun away, pushing her way forwards into his space. ‘Pat, just listen!’
Clare had inadvertently blocked me from his view and I saw my chance.
I charged at him.
A shot went into one of the lights and glass rained down. I grabbed Pat’s wrist, forcing the gun upwards and swiping at his head. For a second his gun was in my hand, but as Pat backhanded me across the face I lost my grip and it spun away across the floor.
Clare was crying, screaming at us to stop, but I couldn’t make out the words. She had her hands to her head, watching us aghast, as if this was the last thing she had expected to happen.
Pat and I both went for the gun, grappling with each other, and I managed to crack his head into the granite work surface. As I made for Pat’s automatic, just feet away, I felt a searing pain down my calf.
My left leg collapsed under me before I knew what had happened.
As I hit the tiles, I turned and saw a blade embedded in the muscle just above my ankle. Without thinking, I pulled it straight out, and the room blurred.
Clare cried out and darted forwards. ‘Pat, no!’
Pat stepped over me.
I dragged myself to my feet using the kitchen worktop, and faced him as he pointed the gun at my head. The end of it looked like a black hole, the end of the fucking universe.
Clare ran into him, full force, and I heard the thud of the silencer.
I couldn’t see hers, but I could see Pat’s face, rigid with shock, suddenly devoid of any colour.
Even the back of my leg had gone numb.
One moment she was alive, her body still upright and moving with every breath, but then it looked as though the strength was simply whipped from her, leaving behind a mass of limbs and cells that could no longer carry out their function.
The legs that I had watched turn pirouettes buckled.
Pat caught her, went down with her, made sure the back of her head didn’t hit the floor too hard, and only then could I see where the bullet had gone into the left side of her chest.
Her eyes were still open, blinking a little.
‘No… Fuck, no…’ Pat dropped the gun and keeled over her, his hands either side of her face as if trying to stop life escaping. ‘No, baby… Baby, stay with me…’
It was like regaining consciousness, realizing that my mobile was in my bag.
‘Wait!’ I tried to put weight on the injured leg and it hurt so much that it brought tears to my eyes. ‘Wait, I can call someone, wait!’
I limped down the hallway, my teeth clenched, hissing, ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck…’ under my breath until I reached my bag. It took me a few seconds even to recognize my phone, I was so blinded with panic.
I picked it up and started to limp back towards the kitchen.
It was like a punch in the face, realizing that there was no way I could call an ambulance.
‘Pat!’ I called, coming back into the kitchen and pausing to regain some control over the agony. ‘Pat, my car! We can—’
‘Shut up!’
He looked up at me, tears streaming down his face.
‘I can call my… I can call…’
He stroked her forehead.
It didn’t seem real, watching her lying there, willing movement, a weak blink, a shallow breath… Air rushed in and out of my lungs. I had a vision of maybe carrying her to the car, getting her to a hospital, but it was fantasy. It would take longer than the minutes, the seconds, we had been left with.
Neither of us moved, for
too long.
I stood with my phone, as if some solution was going to be offered to me.
Pat just brushed her hair back off her forehead, took hold of her hand and hovered his fingertips over the blood that had run down the front of her white shirt, searching for acknowledgement.
Her eyes were half open. Her lips, parted. I thought of Emma, the same expression facing the camera at the docks.
Pat let go of her hand and placed it across her stomach. His expression reminded me of Clare’s that night at the mortuary; pain as if their souls had been ripped in two.
He picked up the gun and I ducked, shielding my face instinctively.
I waited, for the impact that felt similar to being punched, and when I dared to look at him again he was still pointing it at me.
He sighed.
‘NO, FUCK, WAIT!’ I shouted.
He put the gun against his temple and fired.
The inside of his head exploded over cupboards and drawers, and his body slumped backwards.
Blood ran down my ankle and into my shoe. My heartbeat was the only thing breaking the silence, but I could still hear my last words reverberating, as I had seen what he was going to do.
No, fuck, wait!
Feeling sick, unsteady, anaesthetized with shock, I crouched down and looked at her.
Was this it? Was this what she had wanted?
I reached out and rubbed some of Pat’s blood off her forehead. The sensation of her skin under my fingertips seemed such a recent memory, but it didn’t feel as if I could remember without that simmering well of hate; that anger, raging under the surface.
Of course this had been what she wanted, to push one of us too far.
I stood up, with some difficulty, and limped out of the kitchen, back towards the living room. When I was in there I sat down and called Mark.
*
‘Are you OK?’ Mark insisted on crouching down to look at my leg as soon as I let them inside.
Roman Katz went straight through to the kitchen with a nod and a casual muttered greeting. As much as I disliked him, I knew he was one of the only other people Mark would trust enough to come.
I sat down on the bottom stair, grimacing. ‘It’s all right, he missed the ankle, which is handy, cos you know I like those tendons.’
Something You Are Page 26
