They could put it down to shock, maybe. If I faked a lack of memory...
‘They could give us a lead, Kiyomi.’
‘I... didn’t know them.’
‘Could you identify them in a line-up?’
In my mind I could only see their hands, showing the lengths of the blades.
I wouldn’t identify them, not to this guy, but I nodded anyway.
‘And you didn’t see anyone?’
I looked at him. If something happened, if he moved too suddenly, I had an idea that I could maybe reach the kettle and throw the boiled water in his face.
‘No.’
He put his hand over mine and I nearly vomited again.
‘I’m truly sorry for your loss, Kiyomi,’ he said.
Then he left.
That was it. My loss. That was what had just happened to me, condensed conveniently down into a fucking four-letter and one syllable word. My loss.
I sat there, aware only of my own breathing.
The officers didn’t return.
For a second, I considered cutting my wrists with one of the blunt unpolished knives in the cutlery drawer. Then this, my loss, could all be over. Just like that...
But no.
I hadn’t seen anyone, I thought.
I hadn’t seen anyone.
I left the chair and ran out of the Relatives’ Room into the hospital corridor.
But there was no sign of him.
There was no sign of him but I never forgot his face.
4
I called the number from the business card with no name and arranged to meet Mark Chester the following evening, as I’d always been intending to. He didn’t sound surprised to hear from me; the fluency of his speech was unnerving.
I found him sitting in the window of the café he’d suggested in Covent Garden, on an artfully tacky leopard-print stool just out of the sun. On the counter next to him was a brown leather satchel, like the ones public schoolboys carried.
Something by Roy Orbison was playing. It was the sort of tearoom designed to attract hipsters with iPads.
‘I was pretty rude the last time I saw you,’ I said, sitting down next to him. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, you were hilarious. I wasn’t offended; I expected that sort of reaction.’
The stool was so high that my feet didn’t touch the floor, so I sat there swinging them back and forth in the air like a toddler.
When Mark spoke to me next he had his business face on.
‘So, did you think seriously about what we talked about?’
I snorted. ‘That’s a bit of an understatement, but yeah, I thought about it.’
‘Would you like a smoothie?’
‘Er, no, I’m good.’
‘So what do you think?’
It took concentration to become used to his rapid-fire questioning, especially when I was still unsure of my intentions. ‘Look, I’m going to be straight with you. This isn’t the sort of offer where you say you’ll do something for free and then suddenly a few months down the line some hidden charge appears, is it?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Well. . .’ I couldn’t find a reply that didn’t sound like childish cynicism.
Out through the window I could see a guy in a flat cap was setting up for some sort of show. He was staring at the bare legs of every woman that walked by.
‘I totally understand why you wouldn’t trust me,’ Mark said. ‘My flatmate says that I make people uncomfortable.’
‘No, it’s not that. You seem pretty trustworthy. According to Noel you’re up there with the most trustworthy people I’ve met in months. I think he fancies you, to be honest; he got way too excited when we were talking about you. I could smell the man-love.’
‘Well, naturally.’ A wistful smile.
‘I just haven’t really thought about all this since it happened,’ I continued. ‘I haven’t thought about any of them. It’s weird even entertaining the idea that you could do something about it now.’
‘Well, if you don’t mind me writing stuff down like a hack. . .’ he said, going through his bag for a notebook and pen. ‘Can you just tell me what happened? No, wait, tell me about your parents first. Their names, what they did, where you lived, any personal stuff you think is relevant.’
I noticed he was wearing eyeliner.
‘OK, that’s easy. My mother was called Helena and my dad was Sohei.’
It was easy to talk about my parents like this, as if I was reciting their resumés.
He nodded.
‘He worked for a company called Importas. He was manager or something, but he kept moving us between London and Tokyo every few years. We lived in Hampstead in London and Toshima-ku in Tokyo, and then when he lost his job we lived in Tooting. Shit-hole.’
‘And Tooting. . .’
‘That’s where it happened, yeah.’
I paused. For a moment the single high-definition image came back to me. Always my sister. The five-year-old skull cleaved in two. I didn’t remember much of Mum or Dad. If I concentrated really hard I could sometimes see the broken bottle, stained red, that my dad must have raised to try and defend them. The glass was embedded in his hands. I’d seen it as I’d fallen to the floor in shock.
Mark was watching the street performer outside. He didn’t persist in his questioning, so I answered the silence and the vast expanse of blank space on his notepad.
‘I was at this guy’s house, Jensen McNamara. He lived just across the road from us. But I got bored. I went home and bumped into these kids in the stairwell. I can’t remember any of their first names, apart from the oldest one, Nate. They were just kids in the building. Little scabby boys. All Williamses.’
Blades like this. . .
‘They stopped me and said there had been a fight or something upstairs. The oldest one had seen these guys go up. I don’t think he said how many. . . Two. A couple, he said. With blades like this.’
I lifted my hands in the air in front of me, demonstrating.
The bottom of Mark’s glass made a gurgling sound as he sucked the last of his drink up his straw, cutting me off.
I raised my eyebrows.
‘Sorry,’ he said, pushing the glass away. ‘But you didn’t see these guys though? You didn’t see the men the kid saw?’
‘No. If I did. . .’ I swallowed. ‘If I’d been there they would have killed me too. I know that. But by now it’s been so long they probably don’t care enough to. . . to want to track me down or anything. Sometimes I think about it, you know, if I’m scaring myself at night. I wake up and I wonder if they’re still out there looking for me, or whether their job was just done and finished then, regardless of whether I was there or not. I just. . . I don’t get why they wouldn’t come back for me. Why would they let me go just because I was lucky and wasn’t there?’
‘They won’t still be looking,’ Mark stated with some confidence.
I worried he was about to make some sort of inane gesture of comfort or support, like touching my arm or something. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He wasn’t an idiot.
‘How do you know they’re not still looking?’
‘Well, they would have to be pretty shit to have taken nearly three years to track you down.’ He pulled the glass back to him again and frowned down his straw at the remaining bubbles of his drink. ‘If I ever took three fucking years to carry out a hit I’d retire.’
‘And do what? Knit?’
‘I’ve never thought about it. I’m doing what I want to do and. . . we don’t tend to retire, we tend to die. But I’m all right with that.’ He nodded, and grinned. ‘I’m unsure sometimes, whether I’d avoid retiring just in case my job slipped into a hobby. . . and then who knows? No more rules then.’
‘Hasn’t it already become a hobby with you doing this for free?’
‘Maybe.’
Silence.
He added, ‘This isn’t a frivolous act, my wanting to work for you. I�
��m not doing this for fun. It’s just not very often life confronts you with a real mystery, a chance to solve a real mystery.’
I could hear someone playing Angry Birds behind us with the volume turned up to an antisocial level. I straightened my skirt, pulled it down a little and tried to ignore the noise.
‘So, you go upstairs. . .’ He waved a hand at me, drawing a circle on the page with the word ‘Details’ written within it. ‘You don’t have to describe it all to me. Just any extra personal information that forensics might not have picked up on, if it occurs to you. I can find the case file and photos and stuff, no problem.’
All I could hear was the fucking Angry Birds.
‘Someone called the police?’
I nodded.
‘And what happened then?’
‘I. . . What?’
‘What happened then?’
‘Wait.’ I turned, knuckles white around the back of my stool, and snapped, ‘Hey, can you shut the fuck up?’
The girl with braided hair stared at me, gormless. People around us fought to restart their conversations before anyone noticed them eavesdropping. The sound of the game ceased and the girl stood up and flounced out.
I am sitting on a mountaintop, I thought, taking a deep breath.
‘Your father was never. . .’ Mark seemed pensive for a moment. ‘Apologies if this comes off as an insult, but your father was never involved with Yakuza, was he? He didn’t associate with anyone like that when you lived in Japan?’
I knew he didn’t mean it to be offensive, but the very suggestion sent a reactionary shot of anger and defensiveness up my spine. I almost said something scathing about Mark’s tattoos, implying sarcastically that he looked more like Yakuza than my dad ever had. But I stifled the comment.
‘No,’ I said, pursing my lips. ‘He might not have died with all his fingers but he had them all before that.’
‘It’s OK, I didn’t think so, but sometimes you have to ask the obvious questions.’ He shut his notepad. ‘What are you doing now, just working for Noel and Ron?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘What were you doing before?’
I felt embarrassed all of a sudden. ‘Nothing, really. Mum wanted to me to go to uni but Dad was happy for me to stay at home and try to. . . make it as an artist. So I was just doing that, just painting every day. I was thinking about art school a bit but. . . it’s all really expensive, higher education, you know.’
It sounded ridiculous, even to me. I couldn’t believe now that I’d ever been stupid enough to think anything would have come of my staying at home painting. But Mark didn’t seem to share my contempt; he at least humoured me by asking another question.
‘And you don’t do that any more?’
‘Well, I’m only good at two things and one of them was art. You’d have to be pretty damn stupid not to head down the other path if one of the only two things you’re good at is art.’
‘What’s the other thing?’
‘Sex.’ I smirked. ‘Sex and art.’
‘Then you’re right. Best to stick to the former in this climate.’
I thought of the Relatives’ Room, the comb-over and small black eyes, the way he kept saying my name. . .
I’m truly sorry for your loss, Kiyomi.
‘Can you let me know the names of everyone you came across that day? Even if they were kids, it would still help to know. They might have seen something.’
‘Well, there was Jensen McNamara; he lived across from me. I could find his address for you but I’m sure he’s on Facebook. The kids I spoke to were the Williams kids. I can’t remember all their names but they lived a few floors below me, I think. And. . . there’s something else,’ I said, trusting my hunch. ‘It was kinda what made me call you actually. There was a man who came and talked to me just after. . . I don’t know who he was. We were alone, which was weird, and he asked me a lot of questions but I lied to all of them. But he knew I was lying.’
‘And he didn’t identify himself as a police officer?’
‘No. I would have asked but I was really out of it. I don’t know, he could have been anybody.’
‘Not if you were alone. A police officer wouldn’t sit alone with a female borderline minor and ask questions. Don’t take this the wrong way but you look about sixteen.’
‘I’m twenty-one. I was eighteen then.’ I began talking fast. ‘It wasn’t just me. I spoke to a. . . well, he wasn’t a friend, but I spoke to Jensen McNamara yesterday and he said the same man had come to question him too. He described him and said he had a black comb-over. It was the same man. And one of the Williams kids, the oldest one, was killed not long after in a drive-by shooting. He might have seen who did it and now all of a sudden he’s dead. Doesn’t that seem like too much of a coincidence?’
Mark scanned the café behind us, but no one appeared to be listening.
I made a mental note to lower my voice, having forgotten we were in a public place.
‘A drive-by could be coincidental,’ he said.
‘Well, you could check, right? They apparently caught the kid who did it and he’s in a young offenders’ place.’
It was starting to become dim and crisp outside. We didn’t have much longer here.
My heart was racing. I tried to slow it down, slow down my breathing.
‘I can check it out,’ Mark said, with a firm nod. ‘You’ve definitely given me, as the professionals say, a “solid line of inquiry”.’
The last rays of the sun falling on the red overhangs of the shops outside reminded me of Tokyo.
‘Noel said you’ve never failed at a job. Is that true?’
There was no trace of modesty in his expression. ‘Yes.’
‘Seriously, why are you doing this for free?’
‘Because I don’t do my job for the money. I never have.’ He observed the tattoos on the backs of his hands and his black-painted fingernails. ‘That’s why I’ve never failed.’
Available now
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my mum and dad, Paul Davies for being a genius, and Jemma Pascoe and Jonathan Sissons for impeccable taste in music and literature. Also, thanks to Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Leonard Cohen, Elliott Smith, Radiohead, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and Boy Cried Wolf, for the constant soundtrack to writing this one.
‘I did it all myself’
Spike Milligan
About this Book
Emma Dyer left her parents’ house yesterday morning. She was going to meet a friend. She never arrived. Her family assumes she has run off with a boyfriend. Until the police find her body: beaten, raped, shot, and dumped in an alley.
In South London, if you want someone to disappear, you call Nic Caruana. And Emma’s father doesn’t just want his daughter’s killers to disappear; he wants vengeance. He wants suffering. And he’s willing to pay for it. But first, Nic has to follow Emma Dyer through the final hours of her life…
Reviews
“Taut, spare and gripping with unmistakeable undertones of Chandler, Ellroy and Rankin”
Red
“Hanna Jameson writes like an angel on speed… gripping, shocking and relentless”
Q Magazine
About this Series
LONDON UNDERGROUND
The London Underground series is set in the bleak ganglands of southeast London. An upmarket club, The Underground, forms the centre of this amoral, violent, and moneyed world: this is where drug smugglers and corrupt officials discuss business over cocktails and cocaine; where hit men devise honey traps with the gorgeous girls who work the poles...
1. Something You Are
Emma Dyer left her parents’ house yesterday morning. She was going to meet a friend. She never arrived. Her family assumes she has run off with a boyfriend. Until the police find her body: beaten, raped, shot, and dumped in an alley.
In South London, if you want someone to disappear, you call Nic Caruana. And Emma’s
father doesn’t just want his daughter’s killers to disappear; he wants vengeance. He wants suffering. And he’s willing to pay for it. But first, Nic has to follow Emma Dyer through the final hours of her life…
2. Girl Seven
What is the price of revenge?
The day her parents and sister were murdered, Seven did not cry. Instead, she tried to forget. She vowed that one day she would be free from the sight of their blood.
But Seven could not forget. And now that she is part of London’s criminal underworld, she knows men who can maim; men who can kill. But they all have a price.
Will Seven betray her friends to avenge her family?
Girl Seven is available here.
Jump to free preview here.
About the Author
HANNA JAMESON published her first novel, Something You Are, when she was just twenty-one. It was nominated for a CWA Dagger. She has lived in Australia, travelled Europe, Japan and the USA with bands such as the Manic Street Preachers and Kasabian, and worked for three years in the NHS. She is currently studying American History & Literature at the University of Sussex.
You can contact Hanna Jameson via twitter: @Hanna_Jameson
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The story starts here.
Something You Are Page 32
