The Guest House

by David Mark

  The air between them is heavy with unthrown punches. Roe knows he is all bravado. He barely has the strength to wring out a tea towel most days and if he were to throw a punch at this monster of a man he fancies it would be like hitting a roll of carpet. But he is aggressive by nature and has not yet adapted to his physical frailties. He still talks like somebody who knows how to hurt.

  The big man reaches into his trouser pocket and pulls out a mobile phone. He types out a quick message.

  ‘Updating Facebook?’ asks Roe, draining his drink.

  ‘Asking permission,’ he says.

  ‘Need a piss, do you?’

  ‘I’d like to hurt you a little bit.’

  ‘Keep me posted,’ says Roe. ‘Same again, please, love. And a Chupa Chups for my friend.’

  The phone vibrates. The big man looks disappointed. ‘Another time,’ he says, and turns his back. He walks back to the door. Has to turn sideways to leave.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that again,’ says Gaynor, cautiously, putting down his glass. ‘He’s important. And bloody massive.’

  Roe shrugs. ‘I’m not easily intimidated.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  She considers him again. ‘I think we can do business,’ she says, at last. ‘If you can afford it.’

  ‘I can afford it.’

  ‘And you know what you’re buying?’

  Roe nods. Downs the whisky in one. ‘Time’s ticking away. |Look at the state of me. There’s no waiting list in the country that I’d meet the criteria for. This is my chance.’

  ‘It’s not me who makes the decision. I’m a representative, that’s all.’

  ‘The way I heard it, you’re the gatekeeper. You’re a good judge of character. I get past you, I’ve got a chance.’

  ‘The big man – he’d have pulled your head off. Nailed your feet to the floor.’

  ‘I’m dying, love. What the fuck do I care?’ he sucks his teeth. Tastes blood. ‘Who was it he asked permission from?’

  ‘The boss. He’ll have sent him down to get a look at you.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you’re for?’

  ‘I’m for a lot of things. The big man’s just got one job. He does it well.’

  ‘So, we’re moving forward? Look at me. I’ve got weeks.’

  She looks through him. Weighs him up. ‘You’ll get instructions. Where to be, and when. Don’t die before it happens, otherwise your family still owes. Preparations will begin in good faith.’

  He raises his pint glass. ‘Your health,’ he says, his eyes briefly glistening. He looks for all the world like a hard man trying not to cry grateful tears.

  Gaynor nods. Pours herself a shot and downs it. ‘And yours.’

  20

  A little after midnight I drag myself up the stairs to bed. The kids have all flaked out in front of the laptop and I can’t bring myself to move them, so I head to Poppy’s room and lie down under her Dora the Explorer bedspread and turn on the little music box that casts the shape of multi-coloured unicorns onto the wall. My head’s pounding. I know I need to eat something, drink something, but it all seems too much fuss, and my brain is still chewing away at itself with echoes of the dream. In the nightmare, it wasn’t Bishop’s head in the lobster pot. It was Callum’s, his teeth gleaming gold. I saw myself, too: chest splayed open, ribs sticking out like teeth, my whole torso emptied. My eyes remained open, blinking rapidly, as I stared up from a hospital gurney, and a figure with a scalpel approached my face. I hadn’t screamed as I woke, but the urge to run had been very, very real.

  I pull the covers over my head. The bed smells of Poppy, all fusty and lovely: wet grass and cereal. I breathe it in. Try to get comfortable and realise that my phone is digging into my hip. I roll over and pull it free. I haven’t looked at it in hours. Haven’t trusted myself to. I want to call Callum. It’s eating away at me, making my insides fizz. Why has Roe got a picture of him with Kimmy? Where were they? Does he know Roe? My paranoid mind conjures up a dozen different scenarios in which they could be connected, and none of them appeal. I want the truth, not some palatable version of it.

  I switch it on. Wait for it to warm up. Close my eyes as the picture flashes up. My family, in happier times, wrapped up in kagouls and wellies and splashing through the shallows at Sanna. We’re all grinning, and nobody’s faking it.

  There’s a missed call from Callum and two more from numbers I don’t recognise. I’ve got one new voicemail: an enquiry from a well-to-do Dundonian enquiring about last-minute availability in the Easter holidays. I delete the message, angry with her for not being Callum.

  I look at the time: 12.14am. He might still be awake. And if not, if he happens to be dozing beside his fancy piece, then I’m not going to shed a tear for spoiling their beauty sleep. I think I deserve some answers.

  My eyes begin to close before I can decide what to do. I’m tired to my bones. I feel all warm and languid and somehow, despite all of it, there is a little bit of mania in there too. I feel alive. Scared, yes; unsure what to do, certainly. But there’s a vitality to all this – a feeling that I’m involved in something that threatens to show me a world that I’d previously thought only existed in books and movies. Bad people have been doing bad things, and somehow it’s washed up at my door.

  I slide my phone under the pillow and let sleep take me again.

  *

  I wake to the smell of crushed earth and stale ash. It’s pitch black inside the warm pink bedroom, but I know immediately that I’m not alone. It’s a presence: a sense of wrongness that tells me without any possibility of contradiction that there is somebody here, in my home, in my daughter’s bedroom – watching me sleep.

  I shift position. Pull the covers down to expose my face. Whoever it is may have let their eyes grow accustomed to the dark. This is Poppy’s room. Whoever stands at the foot of the bed may not be expecting a grown woman.

  I control my breathing. Run through the possibilities. It could be the kids, looking for Mummy. Or Theresa, lost and high on painkillers, trying to find her way back to the cluttered guest room.

  That scent again. Something foul. Something bad.

  Mr Roe.

  ‘You were in my room,’ comes a voice. It sounds like a saw blade moving across sandpaper. ‘Helped yourself to a little look-around. Thought I would return the favour.’

  Slowly, fighting the urge to cry out, I pull myself upright. Reach out and flick on the little unicorn lamp. Look at him through eyes that aren’t yet ready for the light.

  He looks worse than I’ve ever seen a human being. He’s rotting. It’s as if lightning has struck a random grave and the decades-dead resident has clawed their way to the surface and come looking for a room. The skin beneath his eyes hangs down, exposing weeping red sores, and the scabby blisters in his hair make me think of barnacles and rockpools. There’s a heat coming off him: a greenish pestilence that makes me want to burn every item of clothing and furniture he’s ever touched.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I ask, and I hear the fear in my voice even as I aim for defiance.

  ‘Told you, Ronni. Told you exactly what I’m doing. I’m having a little nosey, poking around. I’m riffling through the drawers, love – I’m moving the pictures and having a sneaky peek behind. I’m sticking a spoon in the skirting board and rooting around for whatever I can lay my beady eyes on.’

  He’s standing at the foot of the bed. He’s got a dirty fawn raincoat over jeans and an old-fashioned stripy shirt – the sort that might be a pyjama top. I can see the bones peeking through his chest. Can see the great tracery of blue veins on his flesh: seamed like ripe Stilton.

  ‘You talked to the police,’ he says, and I notice that he’s leaning against the footboard. He’s wearing gloves. ‘The pretty one. The one who acts like butter wouldn’t melt. You talked to her.’

  ‘They were here!’ I say, in an angry whisper. ‘What am I supposed to do? None of this is anything to do with me!’

  He shrugs,
not caring. ‘It is, love. Well done on working out how to open the Palm Pilot, by the way. Took me a bloody age.’

  I screw up my eyes, confused. ‘Palm Pilot?’

  ‘Bit of technical wizardry that you found in the skirting board, love. Don’t pretend.’

  I pause before replying. Panic rises as I begin to wonder how long he may have been here. Where else he may have strayed before finding me.

  ‘My friend, Theresa…’

  He wrinkles his nose. ‘Didn’t have to happen that way. Poor lass. It won’t be much consolation but heads will roll.’ He gives a twitch of a smile – something that may be a wink. ‘No pun intended.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say, and it sounds pitiful to my ears. Roe sits down at the foot of the bed, the blankets pulling tight at my lower legs. He looks at me for several long, awkward seconds.

  ‘You should call your Callum,’ he says, at last, and he begins to fumble in his pockets, pulling out tissues and receipts and the stubs of smoked cigars. He finds one, still-moist butt and holds it to his nose, breathing it in like the head of a newborn baby.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ I ask.

  ‘Because you saw the picture. Him and his fancy piece. You want to know how he knows me.’

  ‘And if I asked you?’

  ‘I’d tell you the truth.’

  ‘But how would I know it was the truth?’

  ‘See,’ he says, with a smile that shows off long, ratty teeth. ‘Knew you had a bit of copper in you.’

  I pull the blanket around me. Look at the vile, broken-down specimen oozing smoke and corruption in my daughter’s room, and somehow I still feel some twinge of sympathy for him. He’s dying. He’s got one chance at life. And circumstances are conspiring to take it away from him. And then I think of the suffering that has given him his second chance. Think of the sort of people who have given him this opportunity – an opportunity he has only earned through dirty money. I don’t know whether to pity him, hate him or turn my back and hope he leaves.

  ‘What did she ask you?’ he says, quietly. ‘The boss?’

  ‘The boss?’

  ‘DCI. What name did she give you?’

  ‘Emma Cressey.’

  He nods at that. ‘Good. Solid. What did you make of her?’

  I find myself answering even without understanding why. ‘Expensive. Full of herself. Sharp as a blade. Ruthless. I wouldn’t want to take her on.’

  He smiles properly, a father hearing praise about a favoured daughter’s gifts. ‘Aye, that’s not far off. She tell you about Bishop?’

  ‘Wanted to know the nature of our relationship. Told me he’d had his head cut off, just to see how I’d react. Said I should sleep on it before deciding how to proceed. She knew I was holding back.’ I stop and eye him, accusingly. ‘She asked about you.’

  He looks taken aback. ‘Did she?’

  ‘The man in the guest house. That’s what she said. Asked if I knew the sort of man he was. The sort of man you are. She gave me a piece of paper with my bank details on it. Like she was trying to bribe me? But do the police do that? For information? I mean, I know you have informants and stuff – Callum’s into his true crime books and knows all this stuff, but…’

  ‘It’s not a bribe for information, love. It’s a bribe for silence. Somebody wants you to keep your trap shut.’

  ‘But she was the one asking questions!’

  ‘Keeping up appearances, love. For the local plod.’

  ‘I don’t know who to believe!’ I say, and my voice cracks.

  He shakes his head. ‘Ronni, you don’t know the half of it.’

  I swallow what’s left of my pride. Look at him with eyes full of pleading. ‘Why do you have a photo of Callum? What’s he into? Are we in trouble? I feel, so lost, Mr Roe. I don’t think of myself as a brilliant person or anything but I don’t know whether I deserve to be in the middle of all this.’

  He sucks on his lower lip, an eel slurping at its own tail. ‘I’m just a sick man asking you to let my operation go ahead. That’s what you need to remember. Bishop was a man you briefly knew, and you can’t help anybody out with information about who might have hurt him, or why. And as for what happened to your friend, that’s bad business and it disgusts me and I’ll make sure people will pay. My advice is to feather your nest the best way you can. If there’s money in it for you, take it. You’ve got kids. A decent future, if you play it right.’

  ‘I’m not that kind of person.’

  ‘We’re all that kind of person,’ snaps Mr Roe, a sudden flash of temper in his face. ‘We’re a disgusting species, Ronni. We’re a plague. My body is a planet and all the things eating at me are tiny human beings. That’s how it feels. We’re all rotten, but while we’re here we may as well be the best we can be. I’ve got stuff to make up for. Everybody does. My operation is in three days. Just bite your tongue until then. I can make it all right.’

  I close my eyes. Breathe. Hope that when I open them again he’ll be gone. ‘Why do you have a photo of Callum? I need to know.’

  I hear him sigh. ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about your husband, love. Not your fault. Not his either. Some of the best relationships are built on secrets. But I won’t do business with anybody I don’t trust, which means I do what I can to find out chapter and verse. Bishop brokered this deal, but Bishop’s just one man. Bishop has associates. He has people in his life. He’s very well connected.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Callum?’

  He’s shaking his head at me, almost pitying. ‘Not him, lass. The girl. She’s one of Bishop’s connections. One of his brokers.’

  ‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘No, she’s just some bimbo – some tart who’s got her claws in my husband…’

  ‘No, love – she’s a very clever operator who works for one Derrick Ovenden.’

  ‘The gangster?’

  ‘The same. Very important man, Mr Ovenden. Great fucking horrible one too.’

  ‘And Callum just happened to get caught up in all this, did he?’

  ‘I’ve told you – ask him for yourself…’

  There is a sound on the stairs, a creak outside the bedroom door, a shifting of weight on a creaky board.

  Mr Roe is off the bed and reaching into the pocket of his coat before I even have time to register the sound.

  Two figures, rushing through the doorway, a hiss of CS spray and the sudden blue volt of a Taser, and then Mr Roe is on his back and a young woman is screaming, her hands at her eyes, and in the doorway, holding a plastic Taser, glaring at the figure on the floor as if he were the very devil, stands my husband.

  He fixes me with a look I don’t remember seeing before, then pries the woman’s fingers away from her tear-streaked face. Even through the grimace, I recognise her. Kimmy.

  She growls. Swears. Crosses to where Mr Roe lies, convulsing, on the floor, and pulls the two electric volts from his chest. He opens his eyes and stares up at her. Manages a twitch of a smile.

  ‘Hello…’

  She brings her fist down, hard, on the bridge of his nose, and he drops back to the floor, blood running down his cheek. She stands up, smearing her hand across her face, and looks at me. Looks me up and down, and decides I’m not worth her time.

  ‘Callum?’ I ask, quietly. ‘Callum, what’s happening…?’

  He looks at me. Through me. I could light a cigarette on his eyes.

  ‘Get dressed,’ he says, coldly. ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about.’

  21

  Six weeks ago

  A small, damp flat on Dempster Street, Greenock

  ‘Slow down…’

  ‘I said she’s kicked me out! Burned my clothes on the front lawn! She saw the messages. Me and Kimmy. What do I say? How do I tell her?’

  ‘You fucking don’t, lad. You take it, for her sake.’

  ‘No, she thinks I’m sleeping with her!’

  ‘Let her think it. It’s better than the truth.’

 
‘But I need to be here! That’s why we did it this way, isn’t it? So I can be here. To keep them safe, to oversee things, to deal with Bishop…’

  ‘Yeah, but you’ve fucked that up. How did you let her find it?’

  ‘I don’t know, my brain’s all over the place. I can’t remember half the lies I’ve told; I don’t know who I am. I’ve been talking to her like she’s Kimmy – being such a bastard. She deserves so much better…’

  ‘Stop whingeing. Slow down. We can work it to our advantage. You and Bishop have got a good relationship. You’ve already got Pope on your side. Kimmy’s in – she’s doing a good job. Tell Bishop you’re shacking up with Kimmy, you won’t be around to make sure things go smoothly at the castle. He’ll have to come out of hiding himself. He’s a fixer. He’ll either send somebody else or do it himself. We might get the lot of them.’

  ‘How can you say that? My life’s falling apart and all you care about is the operation!’

  ‘You’ve made your bed, son. You have to lie in it.’

  ‘And if I don’t? If I just tie a weight to my feet and paddle out into the loch and let my problems slip beneath the water…’

  ‘Then you’ll be leaving your wife and kids to pick up the pieces. And you’ll lose your one ally.’

  ‘My ally?’

  ‘Me, son. I’m on your side, believe it or not. Do what I tell you, and we can all come out of this with what we want.’

  ‘That’s what Bishop said.’

  ‘Don’t listen to Bishop. Don’t listen to Pope.’

  ‘I should listen to you, should I? Who are you, God?’

  ‘No, son. I’m the fucking devil. But I’m a devil on the right side.’

  ‘Please, Mr Roe…’

  ‘Don’t call this number again. Go. Do what she wants.’

  ‘But I love her!’

  ‘Stop it. You’ll make me cry.’

  22

  Callum picks up Mr Roe with little visible effort: scoops him up and carries him like a groom holding a new bride. Blood runs down Mr Roe’s face and drips on the floor: a trail of droplets guiding my way as if I were a plane looking for landing lights.