In the Dark

by Mark Billingham

  ‘I’m staying over at Gary’s,’ Paul shouted through.

  ‘Oh, OK. I’ll see you in the morning, then.’

  ‘Afternoon more likely. Gary’s missus is away and I think he’s got a bit of a lads’ Saturday planned.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to know.’

  ‘I’ll call you.’

  ‘It’s fine. Have fun.’

  ‘You too.’

  ‘Try not to enjoy yourself too much, though, Hopwood . . .’

  Helen didn’t hear Paul walk out into the hall to get his jacket; hadn’t realised that he’d been saying goodbye. When she came out of the kitchen, she was surprised that he wasn’t there, and she jumped when the door slammed shut.

  For the last couple of days, Theo had been exchanging lookout duties with Ollie, a nice enough white kid with dreads and a convincing line in patois. He was working a corner on Lewisham High Street, near the clock-tower, watching for trouble while Ollie ran ten quid back to the estate and waiting for him to return with the rock. The street market that ran up to St Saviour’s Church was busy, which was normally good for business, and it occupied a few more of the boys in blue, which was never a bad thing. The police station itself, one of the largest in the city, was right opposite him, and, while Theo waited, he stared across at the illuminated hoarding on the bus stop a few feet away. Two cheery-looking coppers - a fat bloke and a good-looking woman - talking into a radio, and a big, bold message printed underneath: VISIBLY SAFER.

  A hundred yards away, in the doorway of an electrical shop, a teenager was staring at the televisions, even keener for Ollie to return than Theo was.

  It would only take a few minutes. ‘Quicker than fucking Argos,’ Easy liked to tell his customers.

  Theo kept one eye on his punter, though he wouldn’t be going anywhere. He danced from foot to foot same as always, wringing his hands; cheeks hollowed out from sucking on the pipe more often than he remembered to eat. Six months ago, Theo might have felt sorry for him, but not any more. Now he just needed a few more sad sorts like this one passing his phone number round; queuing up to buy and boosting his commission.

  He was still waiting to see the deal get done when the Audi pulled up on a side street opposite.

  Easy got out and called him over. ‘We need to get together later,’ he said.

  Theo glanced back over his shoulder, watching out for Ollie. ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  ‘We’re on, you get me? Wave wants to do this tonight.’

  ‘Shit, I thought it would be a while. You know?’

  ‘It’s tonight, man, so gee yourself up, yeah? T . . .?’

  ‘I’m ready, man,’ Theo said. ‘No danger.’

  Easy grinned and smacked his hand against the roof of the car. Not wanting his friend to see anything in his eyes that should not be there, Theo looked over his shoulder again, as though he were just on the lookout, still going about his business.

  Suddenly, Easy spotted something pinned to a tree on the pavement opposite and crossed over. Theo followed; watched his friend study the photocopied flyer and take out his phone.

  Theo looked at what was written: a phone number and description; a picture of a missing dog, staring up at the camera, its eyes whitened by the flash. He’d had a dog himself as a kid, a ratty-looking mongrel far less cute than this one.

  ‘You lost a dog, yeah?’ Easy said, looking at Theo as he spoke into the phone. ‘Well, I think I’ve got it.’ He nodded, said, ‘Shut up, yeah? You can have it back for five grand, or I’ll kill the fucker.’ He listened then made a face; stabbed at the off button. ‘They found it already.’

  ‘Does that ever work?’ Theo asked.

  ‘Once, but the miserable bitch knocked me down to five hundred.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘This is supposed to be a nation of animal lovers, man.’

  ‘We going to have to listen to speeches later?’

  ‘Yeah, usual deal I reckon,’ Kelly said. ‘Bob’ll call us all wankers and moan about the crappy watch or engraved hip flask or whatever the hell we’re presenting him with.’

  ‘It’s something to look forward to,’ Paul said. He pushed his fork through an almost edible cottage pie and thought about heading home from Kelly’s place the next morning earlier than he’d told Helen; doing something with their free Saturday. It would be nice to make a day of it, get out of London, maybe. They had driven to Brighton on a few occasions, got the train down from Victoria once, and always had a good time.

  He felt the phone vibrate in his jacket pocket.

  Then again, you had to beat the traffic to get a full day in, and chances were he’d be in no fit state to make an early start.

  He brought the phone out and down onto his lap, clocked the display, then walked away from the table to take the call.

  ‘Just checking to see how things are going,’ Shepherd said.

  ‘Things are fine.’

  ‘We’ve not spoken for a day or two, so I wanted to make sure.’

  Paul pushed out through the glass doors into the lobby; studied the posters on the noticeboards as he listened. Shepherd sounded agitated. He seemed keen to know that their arrangement still stood, that Paul had kept certain things to himself. Paul told him that he had nothing to worry about, but that it was difficult to talk. Said that he’d call the next day and fix up a time for another meeting.

  Shepherd laughed. ‘I worry, that’s all,’ he said. ‘You understand.’

  Paul wandered back into the canteen, thinking that the day he understood the likes of Kevin Shepherd would be the day to chuck it in and make his own retirement speech. He caught Kelly’s eye and signalled, then walked across to the counter to get them both coffee.

  A proper car park, multi-storey or whatever, was out of the question, Easy decided. Too many cameras. Too many everywhere, he reckoned, with him and everyone else being CCTV’d up the arse twenty-four hours a day. It was one of the first things they taught the new blood: how to pass the merchandise so nothing was ever seen, even if the whole damn thing was caught on camera. It was just a question of keeping your hood up, or angling your body in the right way and finding the blind spot. Got to be second nature after a while, like they were just taking the piss.

  They caught the overground across to Catford, found a side street behind the disused greyhound stadium with no CCTV that any of them could see. Easy and SnapZ took one side of the street and Mikey the other.

  They didn’t have to wait more than ten minutes.

  The kid came bouncing along with a sports bag, like he’d been at the gym or something. As soon as he’d popped the central locking on his car and moved around to drop his bag in the boot, SnapZ was in front of him asking the time. Mikey was behind with the knife and Easy did the talking.

  ‘We just want the car keys, so no need to be silly, you check me?’

  Shock quickly gave way to resignation on the kid’s face and he passed over the keys.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Easy said.

  The kid shook his head. ‘It’s a fucking Cavalier, man. What’s the point?’

  ‘Shut your mouth, or I’ll stick you,’ Mikey said.

  Easy grinned. ‘Wallet would be good as well, and that shiny mobile, seeing as we’re here.’

  Once he had been given what he’d asked for, Easy walked slowly round to the passenger side, leaving SnapZ to drive. They’d take the car round to one of Wave’s lock-ups, stick some new plates on it and sit tight until later. Until it was time to collect Wave, then pick up the star of the show.

  SnapZ turned the key.

  ‘Sweet and simple,’ Easy said.

  Mikey took the kid’s sports bag out of the boot and tossed it onto the pavement before climbing into the back. The kid picked it up and swung it against a wall, swearing.

  He was still swearing as the Cavalier lurched away.

  Helen stopped off on the Old Kent Road, picked up a bottle of the red wine she knew Katie liked. For those few minutes while she was waiting to pay, she resented spending
the money, pissed off suddenly at the idea that Katie was inviting her out of pity. She had a good mind to tell her just how much she pitied her; what with her having a freak for a boyfriend, and the same pathetic desire to be popular she’d had when they’d been at school.

  By the time she got back into her car she felt calm again, and more than a little guilty. She decided that, desperate as she was to give birth, she would miss being able to blame the violent mood swings on her pregnancy.

  It started to rain as she drove up through Borough; got heavier as she crossed London Bridge.

  She was hoping that once they’d got dinner out of the way, Graham might disappear into the attic or wherever it was he went to torture small animals, so that she and Katie could sit and gossip. It would be even nicer if she could drink. Two days earlier, she’d been told that the baby’s head had engaged and it would have been great to raise a glass of something. Being off the booze was definitely something she wouldn’t miss about being up the duff. In fact, as far as she was concerned, they could stick a glass in her hand the second the cord was cut.

  She pushed north towards Dalston and Hackney, wondering if putting wine down as part of your birth plan would be frowned upon. If the midwife would sneak off to call Social Services.

  If she would be sharing that first bottle with Paul.

  Looking around the room, Paul decided that he hated just about everyone there. Of course, a pint or two earlier he’d loved them almost as much, and there was every chance he’d do so again if he put away a few more. The beer took hold of him hard: turning him from soppy bugger to surly bastard as quickly as his capacity to string a sentence together diminished; as often as he had to push his way through to the toilets.

  The retiring officer had made his speech and, other than receiving a matching barometer and wall clock as opposed to a watch or hip flask, it had all gone much as Gary Kelly had predicted. Paul had cheered and heckled as enthusiastically as anyone else. Now, watching the crowd of shiny suits mill around the drab little room, laughing too loudly and drinking their way through the hundred pounds that had been put behind the bar, he knew one thing.

  Pissed as he was, he knew that he wanted more.

  There was no way he was settling for this when his time came. He wanted out well before anybody booked a room above a pub and started the whip-round for some piece of shit from H. Samuel. He wanted to be long gone, and well set up.

  He caught Gary Kelly’s attention across the bar and rolled his eyes. Kelly was a decent copper, but it wasn’t hard to imagine him standing where Bob Barker was, twenty years down the road. Being good at the job was nowhere near enough, not even for the ambitious ones. You needed drive, and you needed bottle, and that bit of you that didn’t really care an awful lot.

  And you needed to lie, like it was breathing.

  Theo sat in the window of Chicken Cottage on the High Street like he’d been told, a carton of wings in front of him and a paper he hadn’t opened. He looked at his watch. It was past midnight, the time Easy had told him to be ready, and he started to think that it wasn’t happening. That Wave had changed his mind or that some business had come up.

  Maybe it had never been going to happen in the first place.

  Maybe just showing up and being ready to do it was the test and there was no more to it than that. He wondered if Easy and the rest were watching him from somewhere right now, laughing their arses off at him sitting in the window like an idiot. Bricking it.

  He picked up a chicken wing, but it was cold, so he dropped it back into the box. Outside, the umbrellas were starting to come down as the shower eased off. It had been raining on and off most of the evening, but it was still a warm night and he hadn’t brought his jacket, even though Javine had stood in the doorway thrusting it at him.

  She’d given him a look then, standing there, that said, I hope whatever you’re doing is worth it. Or maybe the look had just said, Love you, see you later, and everything else was in his mind.

  He had no idea.

  He felt like his head was all over the place: nodding it in time to the music from the speaker above his head, salsa or some such; rolling it around on his neck, trying to keep calm and think about what the next few hours were going to be like; pressing it against the cool of the window, imagining himself taking out his phone and calling.

  Telling Easy that he was OK where he was. That he’d work harder and longer. That he didn’t need no leg up.

  He opened his eyes when he heard the horn and stared out through the steamed-up window at the headlights. He didn’t recognise the car, and it took him a moment or two before he could see that it was Easy, grinning at him like an idiot from the back seat, with Mikey and SnapZ either side of him. He saw Wave sitting behind the wheel, gently reaching across to pat the empty passenger seat next to him, then saying something to the boys behind.

  Something that made them all laugh.

  Theo nodded and stood up, took a swig from his bottle of water. He grabbed a handful of serviettes on his way out, already starting to sweat.

  The cold air slapped him as he and Kelly staggered out onto the street. He took a few deep breaths, puffed out his cheeks, blinked slowly.

  ‘Right,’ Kelly said. ‘We going to find a club or what?’

  Paul squinted at his watch. ‘You kidding?’

  Kelly nodded across the road. Blacked-out windows and a neon sign that barely threw out enough light to illuminate the word: MASSAGE. ‘We could always pop over there. Relax a bit.’

  ‘I’m ready for bed,’ Paul said.

  They stood in silence for half a minute, watching what traffic there was move past. There was a decent breeze blowing and Kelly struggled to light a cigarette. He stepped into a doorway, lifted his jacket to provide the necessary shelter and lit up.

  ‘We going to find a cab then?’ Paul asked.

  ‘You’ll be lucky.’ They watched a few more cars go by. ‘Might get a dodgy one up on the main road. Al Jazeera minicabs, whatever . . .’

  Paul felt as though he might throw up. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, waited for it to pass. ‘Shit . . .’

  ‘We’ll have a good time back at mine,’ Kelly said.

  Paul puckered up. ‘You on the turn, mate?’

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘You sure Sue won’t mind?’

  ‘Told you, she’s away,’ Kelly said. ‘We can sleep in, go over to my local caff for a fry up, whatever.’

  Paul thought it sounded good. Better than watching Helen tiptoe around him at any rate. ‘I said I’d call home,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, better had.’ Kelly tossed away his cigarette butt and started singing ‘Under My Thumb’ as Paul fished in his jacket for his mobile.

  Paul mouthed ‘fuck off ’ as he dialled, and waited. He got Helen’s voicemail and left a message.

  Kelly moved off along the pavement, his arms outstretched, still singing. Paul put his phone away and followed. He joined in with what words of the song he could remember, the pair of them slurring like Jagger on a very bad day as they walked towards the traffic lights.

  Sport - using the word in its broadest sense - had come to Helen’s rescue, with Graham adding a love of televised darts to his catalogue of freakishness and leaving the two women alone for most of the evening.

  They’d sat in the new dining-room extension and reminisced: about former teachers and almost-forgotten classmates; giggling and bitching like the thirteen-year-olds they’d once been. They usually ended up talking about schooldays, and Helen always relished the memories of a time when responsibility was negligible and worries were limited to maths tests and make-up.

  Tonight, it had seemed a very long way away.

  It was when Katie was talking about opening a second bottle of wine that Helen had glanced at her watch and been horrified to see how late it was. It had been almost quarter to two by the time she’d finally got out of there, and it would take at least an hour to get back from Seven Sisters, even at that time o
f night.

  Still a fair bit of traffic around as clubs and bars emptied out. Friday night/Saturday morning, there was no such thing as an easy run.

  She heard her phone ring as she drove past the Stamford Hill Estate. The handset was in her bag, and with nowhere handy to pull over she let her voicemail take the call. It could be nobody else but Paul at that hour. The tones sounded to signal that the caller had left a message. She could guess at its contents: ‘Just called to say goodnight. Hope Graham wasn’t too much of a wanker.’

  The swell of affection she felt was quickly sucked back by an undertow of guilt, and as she slowed for the lights she thought about something Katie had said in one of the evening’s less raucous moments: ‘You always knew what you wanted back then. You had it all mapped out. Kids, husband, career, the lot. It was like you never had any doubt, and the rest of us always knew you’d get it all, because at the end of the day you were always a jammy cow.’

  Helen started at the blare of a horn from the car behind her and realised that the lights had changed. She held up a hand in apology and pulled away, remembering her friend’s expression as she’d spoken and the song that had been playing in the background. How she’d nearly got into the wine herself right about then.

  She turned on the radio dropping down onto Stoke Newington High Street, wondering what time Paul would get back from Kelly’s place, and how hungover he’d be. She was looking forward to telling him all about Graham and his darts fetish.

  He would find that funny.

  It’s a dry night, but the road is still greasy from the shower a few hours before; slick as it’s sucked under the headlights, and there’s not too much traffic rattling across the cracks in a main drag that’s probably the worst maintained in the city.

  It’s morning, of course, strictly speaking; the early hours. But to those few souls on their way home, or struggling out to work in the dark, or already about business of one sort or another, it feels very much like night; the middle of the bastard.