by Joseph Knox
A haggard man was sitting on a sofa opposite them, swilling a glass of red wine. He was dressed in an outrageous parody of femininity. He wore a huge pink wig with a tight corset and miniskirt. The look was finished with thick, slick make-up, sparkling tights and red high heels.
‘Detective Waits,’ he said, not looking away from the kissing couple. ‘Excuse me if I don’t rise for the occasion.’
‘I need to talk to the Bug.’ I leaned against a wall, felt the cold sweat under my clothes.
‘He’s out,’ said the man, ‘foul little shit that he is. Are you out?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Aidan Waits for no man,’ he said, looking at me for the first time. ‘They say it’s very liberating …’
‘I know they do. I’m all for it. I also know he’s here, so go get him for me, sweetheart.’
The man smiled, did his best to look bashful. ‘What’s in it for me?’
I pushed an expensive-looking vase off its stand. It smashed on to the floor and the piano playing stopped. The teenage couple looked up at me from the bed, still holding on to each other.
‘I need to talk to the Bug,’ I repeated.
‘You want the organ grinder,’ said the man. ‘Fine, I’ll go and get him, but he’s so serious lately, I don’t know if he’ll grind your organ or not.’ With that he stood up, gave me a wink, and walked out of the room, caressing the boy at the piano as he went. The kids on the bed stared at me blankly and we waited a few minutes in silence.
When the man came back, he’d taken off his wig, thrown a shapeless grey jumper over the corset and clawed off some make-up. He had a face like a nun’s knee.
He was barefoot now and acknowledged me with a grunt as he sat down.
‘Dick,’ he said to the boy at the piano. ‘Dom,’ he said to the boy on the bed. ‘Give us a minute.’ They got up sluggishly. The boy on the bed gave his girlfriend’s arm a tug or two, but she’d passed out. He shrugged his shoulders and left her there, face down in the pillow, following his friend into the back.
‘No hurry,’ I said.
‘Excuse me for taking my time, but you never come here with good news.’
‘If it were up to me, I’d never come here at all.’
‘Funny we see so much of each other, then.’
‘I need some information.’
‘What’s new?’
‘About drugs.’
‘Bor-ing,’ said the Bug, getting to his feet.
‘Sit down. A pound of Eight got snatched from Zain Carver the other day. I need to know where it is.’
He sat forward, fascinated. ‘Why haven’t the police been here?’ I didn’t say anything. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? You really have gone over to the dark side. All the way.’
‘Have you heard anything?’
‘I heard you’ve been stealing evidence. I heard you’ve been eating speed for breakfast, dinner and tea. I even heard you rattling on your way up the drive like a pack of Tic Tacs.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘I also heard that hot mess Isabelle Rossiter got some bad Eight inserted inside her,’ he said with a smile. ‘Wouldn’t have anything to do with that, now, would it?’
‘No.’
‘Pity,’ he said to himself. ‘I just love the thought of it …’
I waited.
‘You’re no fun any more. Remember when we first met?’ The Bug had grown up in The Oaks group home, same as me. When I knew him, he was a sensitive soul, ten years older and just realizing he was gay. He’d lent me books and albums, expecting nothing in return. At the time I’d thought he was trying to convince me that there was some life, some hope, outside the place. Now I see that he was probably trying to convince himself.
He smiled. ‘I’d say something outrageous and you’d come back with a little one-liner. Something funny and cruel. You’ve stopped doing that now, haven’t you? You’ve run out of funny things to say.’ He took a sip of his wine. ‘You’re such a disappointment.’
‘If I’m disappointing you, I must be doing something right.’
The Bug threw the wine glass over his shoulder, laughed, and clapped his hands.
‘That’s more like it. You give something, you get something. There’s a kid I know,’ he said, flashing me a candid look, ‘eighteen years old, officer, I swear. A kid I know got extra lucky this morning. Not only did he see yours truly, but when he went buzzing down to the Burnside afterwards he ran into someone trying to shift a pound of Eight. Got it half-price.’
‘Name?’
‘Oh, Slimmer or Swimmer or something like that – you know how they are these days. Comes from a very good family, though. Lives on Sycamore Way.’
‘West Dids?’
The Bug nodded. ‘Mum and Dad are out this weekend so Daddy Longlegs is going over to entertain the troops.’ He was referring to himself.
‘House number?’ The Bug didn’t say anything. I stepped towards another vase.
‘Thirty-one.’
‘Stay home tonight. I’m doing you a favour.’
‘I’d rather not owe you one.’
I nodded at the girl, passed out on the bed.
‘Get her a cab and we’ll call it even.’
19
It was after 1 a.m. when we arrived. Sycamore Way was lined with huge, ageless trees. When I was young, the other kids at school made pilgrimages there in couples, carving their names inside love hearts into the bark.
I only knew it by reputation.
November had already stripped the leaves away when we arrived and, in the winter gloom, the trees looked like enormous skeletal hands, reaching to the sky.
The road was broad and commanding, giving an impression of wealth and success without going to any great lengths. The homes on each side were restored Victorian mansions.
Carver had stared off into the street for a minute when I told him where we were going. I think he knew then that he was nearing the end. It was one thing for spiked Eight to wash up at the Burnside, another thing entirely for it to arrive in the pristine upper-class greenery of Sycamore Way. He drove in silence until we pulled up outside a grand property.
‘Thirty-one,’ he said.
We couldn’t see a number on the gate but had both counted down from the bottom. The house itself was at the end of a private lane. Although it was hidden behind an embankment of trees, we could make out the roof from the road.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘You should probably wait here.’
He looked at me.
We both got out of the car and walked towards the property. An impressive, automatic black-and-gold gate stood at the end of the drive. Having been left ajar, either by malfunction or by human error, it offset the perfect symmetry of the place.
We passed through it, up the driveway. There were cars parked alongside the lawn, all of them incongruous against the backdrop of the mansion. They were small hatchbacks, probably first cars belonging to teenagers. A dull, insistent beat was coming from a sound system inside.
Carver nodded up at the house.
Illuminated in a window was a young girl. She was standing in a kitchen, at a sink. As we drew closer, her face split into a perfect white smile. We both stopped before realizing that she couldn’t see us. She was smiling at her own reflection in the window. She wore a tight, brilliant-white vest over tanned skin. With her dusty blonde hair, from inside that house, she conveyed an air of health and wellbeing.
Carver walked up the path to the door. The monotonous beat from the sound system was louder inside. Thick and heavy.
The door led into a large hallway. There was a table littered with junk mail and bills and, beside it, a coat stand covered with distressed-denim jackets. I followed Carver to the right, heading for the kitchen, where we’d seen the girl.
He stopped.
Dominated the doorway so I couldn’t see past. The beat of the music grew louder as I moved around him.
The girl was standing in a large puddle of blood. I forced my eyes up to her face. She
was still smiling at her reflection as though we weren’t in the room. It looked like she’d been carrying a tray of glasses and dropped them. She’d been walking up and down on the shards for some time, oblivious to the pain. Her feet were cut to pieces and had bled out all over the white tiles.
The girl turned our way, crunching more glass beneath her bare feet, repeating the perfect white smile we’d seen through the window. Showing us the arm she’d injected into. It hung, limp at her side, blue veins standing out like motorways on a map.
I pushed past Carver, walked over the glass and held her upright. She looked me in the eyes and nodded slightly, still smiling, like she had no control over it. I picked her up, carried her to a sofa at the far side of the kitchen and set her down.
Turning to look at Carver, I saw he was following the sound of the beat to a closed door. The music had seemed sharper since we arrived into the kitchen, but when he opened the door it cut loudly through the air.
He walked inside and didn’t come back out. I looked at the girl and her eyes locked on to mine. She was still smiling but it had started to twist into something else.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, out of breath. There was a reading lamp positioned next to the sofa, lighting her up more than I would have liked. Close-up, I could see that her left-hand side was turning a pale, almost pastel shade of blue. Her feet glistened with blood and shards of embedded, broken glass.
I crossed the room towards the beat of the music. The door that Carver had gone through. I shouted his name but he didn’t answer. The beat felt louder, more aggressive, and I was hit by the smell of sick. The room was a lunatic asylum of pain and shining, sweating, naked limbs. I counted five girls and three boys. All teenagers. Some were face down in their own sick, some had contorted blue faces. Some slept serenely.
They’d all injected.
Carver was standing in the middle of them. He had his back to me, his head hung low. He straightened to his full height and went forward. I thought he was looking more closely at one of the girls, twitching on the floor. Instead, he walked past her to the sound system. He examined it for a second and then switched it off.
The lack of music exposed the low moans coming from the kids. I didn’t know what to do. He turned, took his phone from his pocket and started to dial.
‘Who are you calling?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Put that down,’ I said, walking towards him. He reached out, grabbed my collar and held me at arm’s length by the scruff of the neck. He didn’t look at me while he waited for the phone to be answered.
‘Police,’ he said. ‘Ambulance and police.’
20
Carver killed the connection on his phone and walked out. I heard gurgles and low moans from the dosed kids. Some were curled in the foetal position. One was lying on his back, drawing his knees up like Isabelle had. Soon they all started doing it, faces turning blue.
The girl closest to me was throwing up blood. I rolled her over so she wouldn’t choke on it and walked back into the kitchen. I pulled the door closed behind me. I pulled and pulled until I heard the click of the handle.
I’d been holding my breath and steadied myself against the wall, absorbing the rush of air into my lungs. I walked to the window, tried to look outside. All I could make out was my own thin reflection. I realized that the girl we’d seen through the window must have been looking at herself, wondering if her face was changing colour like the others. I could hear her fitting on the sofa.
Then I saw lights.
Headlights and flashing blues, bleeding into one another, illuminating the room. I heard car doors closing. Voices. Booted men and women, crashing in on the quiet.
I was lighter than air when I left. I went out a back door, into the pitch-black night, through the garden. I walked carefully at first, then through trees, bushes, ponds, paying no attention to where the path was. I climbed over a fence, went across another lawn and came out on the next road. First stumbling, then walking, then running.
III
Closer
1
The daylight was awful. It floodlit the insane, the terminally ill, turned loose again for the day, laughing and crying and pissing their pants through the streets. It was like the lights going up at last orders, turning the women from beautiful to plain, exposing the men for what they all are at their worst. Ugly, identical.
It was Monday morning, almost a week since Sycamore Way. A week since I’d last taken speed. I’d heard bar-talk about Franchise doormen getting kicked in. About Carver cabs being turned over. Collections taken by force. No one was talking too loudly, though, and I hadn’t heard who’d been held up or hurt. I thought about Catherine.
Driving through the city I saw a jarring addition to its colour scheme. Uniformed police presence had been ramped up, with reflective Day-Glo jackets blaring out from every corner. They were ostensibly there to stop-and-search, to engage with the herd and give them whatever the agreed story was. Their role was mainly cosmetic. Lipstick on a pit bull.
Dressing for my interview with Parrs, I’d pulled on a suit I thought I could still fill. It hung loosely, a hand-me-down from someone I used to know. I’d walked quickly past the police officers standing on the street and found myself at headquarters a few minutes early.
It was uncharacteristically quiet. I could hear the air conditioning overhead. The last time I’d been around was after finding Isabelle Rossiter, when it seemed that the building might come apart at the seams with activity. On this Monday morning it was a ghost town. Every free body was standing outside, reassuring the public.
I showed my card and signed in.
My signature flowed out automatically, but it looked like a stranger’s handwriting. I stared down at it for a second until the officer at reception politely cleared his throat. I accepted a visitor pass and moved on. My mind was elsewhere, already running through what I had to tell Superintendent Parrs. I took a lift up to the fourth floor, hoping not to see anyone I knew. I was almost at his door when my phone rang.
‘Waits,’ said the man on the other end. ‘We need to talk.’
‘I’m about to go into Parrs—’
‘I know that,’ he said. ‘Meet me in the stairwell.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘You’ll thank me.’ I hung up, carried on going and then hesitated. I stopped and checked the time. Then I turned, walked back the way I’d come and pushed through a fire door. The staircase was lined from top to bottom with exposed pipes. They kept the air perpetually heavy and warm. The lighting was variable, too, with long stretches of bulbs having burnt out at different points without ever being replaced.
I saw a shape, a man, walking down from the fifth floor towards me. He stopped with three steps between us.
‘Aidan,’ said Detective Kernick.
‘Sweetheart.’
He stepped into the light. For the first time I noticed that the charcoal colour of his hair was spotted with lighter greys and whites. I wondered if it was a recent development. He looked about five years older.
‘I’m glad I caught you,’ he said.
‘You sound it.’
‘Mr Fucking Insight. Your debrief with Parrs. You’ll have a lot to talk about …’
‘So if you don’t mind …’
‘Course,’ he said, standing to one side. Out of the light he was just a shape again. ‘That’s the great thing about you, Waits. Always so keen to walk into the shit.’
‘What am I walking into?’
He craned his head forward, back into the light. Glared at me. ‘You really haven’t got any friends here, have you?’
‘What am I walking into?’
He took two steps down, leaned into my ear. ‘They know,’ he hissed. I took a step back. He was entirely lit up now. ‘The drugs,’ he said. ‘The drinking, the screwing. Who the fuck did you think you were?’ I tried to move past him, but he stopped me with a hand on my chest. ‘Just a second, son.’ I could feel the sweat on his palm, bleeding through my shirt.
We were both standing in the light now and he looked me dead in the eyes.
‘Were you fucking her?’
‘Who?’ I said, giving away more than I would have liked.
The flicker of a smile. ‘Isabelle.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
He looked at me for a second. ‘Those pictures,’ he said. ‘The ones of you and Izzy, cosying up at the Carver place. They’re off the table.’
‘What about Rossiter?’
‘He’s the one who asked me to source them in the first place. To check up on you. He knows what it means for his job and mine if they come to light. Thought you should hear it before speaking to the Super.’ He peeled his hand off my chest. ‘One less thing for you to talk about.’
‘Who took those pictures?’
He smiled. ‘Fuck yourself.’
I walked away from him.
‘He doesn’t need to know,’ Kernick said to my back.
I stopped in the doorway. ‘Doesn’t need to know you illegally carried out your own investigation?’
‘You little—’
‘Don’t dress self-preservation up as charity, Kernick. It’s a bad look.’
‘Some self-preservation might save your life, son,’ he said, coming after me. I let the door close in his face.
By the time I got to Parrs’ office I felt sick. I took a breath, walked into the small waiting room. Standing there, then, in that brand-new building, in that old suit, I felt like the wrong man. Like I should never have gone back. Something in the way his secretary looked up at me made me think:
Fucking run.
2
Superintendent Parrs stood as I walked into his office.
‘Waits,’ he said, directing me to a chair. I sat opposite and, after some arrangement of the papers at his desk, he resumed his seat. He looked like he hadn’t slept since Isabelle died. I could only imagine what Sycamore Way had done to him. The deaths had been national news. His red eyes stared straight through me and his Scottish accent, always hard and low, was a brick wall.
