The Smiling Man

by Joseph Knox

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘The good news is that due to my tireless work on this case, I’ve managed to close the book on our smiling man.’

  I looked up at him. ‘You what?’

  ‘Yeah, well it’s obvious, isn’t it? Him and this Blick guy had some crooked deal at work. Drugs most likely, although since Smiley Face burned the evidence in those dustbins you failed to investigate, we’ll never know. But Blick’s financial records show he’s up to his arse in debt – apparently, that’s why him and his brother fell out – so it’s easy to see how he might go over to the dark side. I think they betrayed each other. Blick poisons the smiling man. Smiling man cuts up Blick in the bath. Afterwards he realizes he’s been spiked. Staggers to the Palace, knowing it’ll lead us back to Blick.’

  ‘That doesn’t even start to make sense,’ I said.

  ‘Well, this helps. The cash found inside the dustbin was fake.’

  ‘Fake?’

  ‘Quality stuff but fake nonetheless. And the card that old Smiley Face put down at the front desk of the Midland was a clone. Also under the name R. Sole. He was some con artist, Aid.’

  I was shaking my head. It hurt. ‘So his dying act is to implicate someone he’d just cut up and flushed down a toilet?’

  ‘Human nature’s always been beneath you.’

  ‘And if they took each other out before we even started investigating, who killed Cherry?’

  ‘Random sex case. Who cares? One less chick with a dick on the streets, I’d throw him a fucking party.’

  ‘And who had a nail gun to Amy Burroughs’ head?’

  Sutty was tutting now. ‘It’s a shame you can’t cash all these reality checks, Aid. You’d be a fucking a millionaire. Amy Burroughs doesn’t want to take things any further.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Declined protection and all. She wants to move on. Parrs is impressed. Thinks I’ve tied it up like a kid in the basement. Bound and gagged the fucker.’

  ‘You didn’t take it to Parrs …’

  ‘I felt, given the circumstances, I had no choice. I was updating him on your current lodgings and it just slipped out. Forensics were able to match DNA found in Anthony Blick’s office to the blood found in the Midland Hotel, by the way. So there’s no doubt he died there. That was smart thinking, Aid. You should’ve been there to receive the results, though.’ He banged on the door and the bolt opened again. He stepped out into the hallway and looked back at me. ‘That bloke you battered? He got up and walked away. I hope he doesn’t know where you live. They’ll turn you loose tomorrow morning if you make it through the night, but expect to face charges from the bar owner.’ He smiled again, his eyes aglow. ‘And if you decide to take the coward’s way out when you get home, then do medical science a favour, yeah? Stab yourself through the heart so they can study your fucking head. Sleep tight.’

  The door crashed like a gong behind him.

  10

  I passed a bad night trying to stay awake through my self-diagnosed concussion. I didn’t know what time it was but I could see the moon in a grubby window, slicing through the sky like a scythe. I listened to conversations, screams and echoes passing through the walls and tried to imagine the lives they were attached to. I’d have swapped places with any one of them. I must have slept, because when I removed my forearms from my face, the sky outside had tinted like an old photograph, catching the scuffed, dull colours of my cell.

  It was morning.

  Everything hurt.

  They banged on the door an hour later and I called a taxi to take me home. I paid extra for a slow drive. Climbing painfully out of the car, I stopped on the street. Sian was standing by my front door, looking pale and tired. She opened the fingers of one hand in a small wave. When I got to the door she reached out and lightly touched my face, her eyes taking it all in. Then she looked directly at me, stood on her tiptoes and gently hugged me.

  We lay on the bed, listening to music, drifting in and out of sleep. Sian had gone, wordlessly, to the record player. Removed Blackberry Belle by the Twilight Singers and replaced it with Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks. She hesitated for a moment before lying down next to me, shifting herself closer. She ran a hand through my hair, exploring the new bumps and seams in my skull. I put a cautious arm around her shoulder, watching the pulse move in her neck, trying to memorize the freckles on her radiant white skin.

  It felt like the end of something.

  ‘Those were the dreams you were having,’ she said.

  ‘He was always like that,’ I said. ‘Not his face but the rest of him. He hasn’t changed.’

  Sian thought for a moment. ‘It’s like he’s a part of the heatwave.’

  ‘What was she like, anyway, your sister?’

  ‘A thinker,’ I said. ‘Stubborn, lovely.’

  ‘I walked out when Ricky told me about the pictures.’

  ‘I think he was just trying to look out for you.’

  Sian’s fist closed around my hair.

  ‘You used to talk in your sleep,’ I said.

  ‘Not like you did …’

  ‘What kinds of things did I say?’

  She laughed. ‘We haven’t got that long.’

  ‘You were buying drugs, weren’t you, in those pictures?’

  I was silent for a moment. ‘Yeah,’ I said, finally.

  ‘What’s it about?’ She was leafing through the copy of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám that had been beside my bed.

  ‘Living life, apparently.’

  She put it down and shifted against me. ‘Only you’d need a guidebook.’

  ‘Was there anything else that you lied to me about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t remember.’

  She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘You could be so many things, you know …’

  I looked at my scarred hands and closed my eyes.

  ‘We’ll see each other less and less,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We’ll drift apart again.’

  ‘I know.’

  Sian was sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to me.

  She turned slightly. ‘And what are you gonna do?’

  VIII

  A Pair of Brown Eyes

  1

  Sian and Ricky’s engagement party was held at the home of his parents. Their back garden was crammed with people. Resplendent with hanging lanterns, bunting and colourful bouquets of flowers. There was a large tent set up in the centre of the lawn, from which a band was playing ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’, and small children were doing laps of it, scuffing up their Sunday best with grass stains. Guests held perspiring glasses of Pimm’s or Prosecco, or paper plates of barbecued food, and there was laughter, skin, sunlight, everywhere you looked.

  Sian wore a shimmering silver dress with her hair pulled up and her porcelain shoulders on show. The sun had started to catch her skin, and a light constellation of freckles was visible about her cheeks. Greeting old friends, pausing for photographs and talking to large circles of people, she was impossible not to look at, impossible not to love. She moved through the party like an aura, and even the places she’d been and gone from held something of her radiance, her afterglow. Occasionally her eyes went to mine from across the field and I nodded at her, I smiled. I’d never seen her looking so happy. A lot of heads had turned at my arrival. I was talking to a friend of Sian’s, explaining away the bruises on my face, the scars on my hands, as a hit-and-run.

  She put a hand on my arm. ‘You must feel so powerless …’

  ‘I don’t know. When I look back at all the times I’ve deserved a kicking and not got one, I can’t be too angry.’ She laughed. ‘I think I’m still basically ahead.’

  ‘So you did have it coming?’

  ‘It’s the heat, I think. Fate turns into karma at forty degrees.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Ricky, interrupting us. ‘Can I borrow you? Need a strong pair of hands for the keg …’ He started off towards the ho
use before I could answer.

  ‘Do you think he was talking to you or me?’ I said to the girl. She smiled and I followed him. We stepped into the cool shade of the porch, standing between stacks of cakes, bottles and buffet foods, in a corner. When Ricky turned he looked as stiff as his starched shirt.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘An old friend …’ I said.

  ‘Very funny. Sian said it was at The Temple. You wrecked the place.’ I nodded. ‘She had to go to the owner and beg him not to press charges against you.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘She could have got hurt.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘She thought you’d gone mad.’

  I hesitated. ‘I know that.’

  ‘And I thought we had an agreement.’ When he said this he sounded so much like a little boy doing an impersonation of his successful, business-class parents that I felt sorry for him.

  ‘And she told me that you showed her the pictures anyway,’ I said. He reddened. ‘That’s a good thing. It means you’re not starting this off on a lie. I’m here because she asked me to be, and because I owe her that much. But I agree with you. She could have got hurt. So when I fade out of the picture, it’ll be because I decided to. And in ten years’ time when you’re happy together, you won’t have to wonder if it’s because you blackmailed her ex. Look after her,’ I said, backing out of the room. ‘We probably won’t be seeing each other around …’

  ‘Hang on, have a drink.’ He pulled a fresh bottle of champagne from an ice bucket. I shook my head and walked away. ‘Did she spend Friday night with you?’

  I stopped. ‘I spent Friday night in the cells, partner.’

  ‘Saturday day, then. You know what I mean.’

  I turned around. ‘Only because you always mean the same fucking thing. What did she tell you?’

  ‘She said she went to see if you were OK …’

  ‘So why don’t you believe her? Has she ever given you a reason not to?’ He didn’t say anything. ‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ I said, taking the dripping-wet bottle of champagne from him. ‘I’ll be needing this, though.’ I walked out into a wall of heat and crossed the luminous-green lawn, over to the driveway. I popped the bottle when I was halfway down it and started to drink.

  ‘You’re not leaving, are you?’

  I turned. It was Sian’s friend, who I’d been speaking to earlier.

  ‘Duty calls,’ I said, unsuccessfully trying to hide the bottle. I gave up and turned to face her. ‘Go back and have some, yeah?’

  She smiled and shook her head at me. ‘You’re a lost cause, Aidan Waits.’

  IX

  Turn on the Light

  1

  I buzzed the first-floor flat and waited. It was almost lunchtime and Owens Park was quiet, with most of the students either still in bed, sleeping off Sunday night, or attending their first lectures of the week. I’d walked through one or two groups on picnic blankets. Golden-skinned girls, gleaming with suntan cream, their male counterparts going stoically red.

  I heard the bolt on the door release and pushed it open.

  There was a girl at the top of the stairs who I recognized from my last visit here, when she’d been waiting for a cocktail. It looked like she’d just returned from a morning run. She was sweating, out of breath.

  ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Earl’s friend?’

  ‘Is he around?’

  ‘Work, I think …’

  ‘That’s OK, I was actually hoping to speak to Sophie …’

  ‘Who did you say you were?’

  ‘If you tell her Detective Constable Waits is here she’ll know what it’s about.’

  ‘Oh …’ She backed off down the hall and I climbed the stairs. When I reached the top I could hear low voices from Sophie’s room. I pushed the door open enough to talk through.

  ‘Morning,’ I said. ‘Can we have a word?’

  The friend edged out past me and Sophie appeared. She looked trapped, I thought. ‘Sure,’ she said, moving back inside the room. I followed. She sat on the bed, folding her legs beneath her and placed both hands on her lap, each holding the other. I sat on the absurd pink chair at the desk. When she looked at me properly for the first time, she sat up with concern. ‘Your face …’

  ‘I walked into a door.’

  ‘A door?’

  ‘A revolving door. I wanted to give you an update on Ollie Cartwright.’

  ‘What’s left to say?’

  ‘Well, he left us on the threat of releasing the sex-tape once he got abroad. That looks unlikely now.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘Mr Cartwright was arrested when he reached Dubai.’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to make anything official …’

  ‘It was on an unrelated matter. The local authorities found a large quantity of cocaine in his possession. They take that pretty seriously out there, so it’s unlikely he’ll be back any time soon. For the next few years we’ll be the least of his problems.’ When Sophie’s face altered and she allowed genuine relief to flood into it, I realized her guard had been up since I entered the room. Maybe since I’d first met her. This would probably be our last interaction, and I needed to make something happen.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t thank me. Thank his dealer.’

  ‘If I could, I would,’ she smiled. ‘I don’t know what to say. It feels wrong to be happy …’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes it’s a relief when a guy hits his natural level. There was one other thing I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, though.’

  ‘Oh?’ she said, re-clasping her hands.

  ‘When I went round to see Mr Cartwright last week, after our first conversation, I found your jacket hung up in his flat …’

  ‘Yeah, I left it there. I told you. My student ID was inside, that’s how he found me.’ She sounded like a drama student reciting her lines.

  ‘When I returned it, this fell out of your pocket …’

  I unfolded the note and handed it to her.

  Oliver Cartwright. Ollie. Mid-thirties. Thinning red-brown hair, some paunch. Incognito. 7 p.m.

  I saw her breath quicken. ‘Where did you get this?’ She said it with a flash of genuine anger, genuine confusion, that I was surprised to see.

  ‘Like I said—’

  ‘I … just …’ She swallowed. Tried to recover. ‘I just didn’t think it was in my jacket pocket …’

  I didn’t want her to lie to me so I gave her a nudge towards the truth. ‘That is your handwriting, isn’t it?’

  She hesitated. ‘Yeah, I remember now. It was weird. When we were talking in Incognito, he took out a pen and paper. Asked me to write that down …’

  ‘He asked you to write down his name, his nickname, an unflattering description and where and when to meet him?’ I saw the pupils contracting in her eyes. She didn’t say anything. ‘You know, Sophie, if you actually arranged to meet Ollie Cartwright before he filmed the two of you together, if it was a date or something, that wouldn’t make it any more your fault …’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said, fully committing. The pupils were like pinpricks in her eyes. ‘Like I said, he asked me to write it at the table. He wanted it as a memento or something, but I must have left it in my jacket pocket.’ As if to prove the note’s meaninglessness, she lifted it for me to take. She was holding it so tightly that her thumbnail turned white.

  ‘Keep it,’ I said, as reassuringly as I could. ‘He should be out of your hair for good now, but any problems and you know where I am.’ She didn’t say anything but closed her fist around the note. ‘Don’t you, Sophie?’ She swallowed, nodded. I gave her a half-smile and went to the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For everything.’

  She sounded sincere but I thought she looked afraid of me. I descended the stairs with more questions than I’d had on my way in. I decided I needed a cocktail.

  2

  The Alchemist was doing brisk business for a bar on a Monday
lunchtime. The outdoor terrace, blinding white beneath the sun, was fully occupied, with groups sitting down to gourmet burgers off pieces of driftwood, ice-buckets filled with Corona, or complicated, hair-of-the-dog cocktails. Inside, it was darker, cooler, lit by hanging clusters of lightbulbs. They bestowed a kind of alchemy on the hammered-copper bar-top itself, and it seemed to glow golden beneath them.

  The barman was putting the finishing touches to a theatrical cocktail involving dry ice, and a thick, smoke-like vapour was pouring out of the beaker. It looked like a science experiment. The menu was designed to resemble a dreamy, Victorian gentleman’s periodic table, illustrated with sketched intersecting geometric shapes, fossils and kraken tentacles. I was trying to interpret it when the barman eased into position opposite me.

  ‘What’s good?’ he said, in a cool monotone.

  ‘Afternoon, Earl.’

  He took a step back. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Nothing a drink wouldn’t fix. Anything you can recommend?’

  ‘I’d usually say something tall and strong, but it looks like you’ve had enough of that for one day …’ I didn’t say anything. ‘You look serious.’

  ‘It just hurts when I smile.’

  He shrugged. ‘What kind of thing do you like?’

  ‘When it’s a cocktail I want it to taste like static, y’know? Like white noise. I want to feel the brain cells dying.’

  ‘Sure.’ He hesitated, then turned and got to work, drawing on several bottles from the alcoves around him. Finally he handed me the drink. ‘Barrel-aged corpse reviver,’ he said. It was served in a long-stemmed glass and when I took a sip I tasted Sapphire gin and Cointreau.

  ‘What do I owe you?’

  ‘On the house.’

  ‘Really? In that case, you must owe me something. I thought you hated the police …’

  ‘You were good with Soph,’ he shrugged. ‘What brings you here, anyway?’