by David Thorne
I wake up in a double bed with soft cream sheets, and for some time I do not know where I am or what has happened. It is light outside and I lie still, listen to my breathing. I am wearing only my underpants and my head hurts and I am very, very thirsty. After a while my thirst is all I can think about, and I sit up and look about the room. There is a bottle of Evian on the unit next to the bed. It has not been opened and I crack the seal and drink, put it down, drink again until it has all gone.
My clothes are folded on a chair next to the door and I stand up slowly and walk over to them, fragments of the night before coming back to me as I start to dress. As I am buttoning my shirt I hear the buzz of an entryphone and shortly afterwards the sound of a door opening, closing. I am sitting on the edge of the bed, putting a shoe on, when the door opens and Maria appears. She stands there for a moment without speaking, looks at me as if I am a disappointing present she has just unwrapped.
‘Maria.’
‘Don’t talk. Just get up and let’s get out of here.’
She turns and I stand up and follow her into a corridor. Saskia Gove is standing at the far end, next to an open door. She does not say anything when she sees me. Maria passes her, out into the day. As I follow her, I look at Saskia. She meets my look but there is no warmth in her eyes, no interest or recognition. It is as if she has forgotten who I am.
‘Don’t come back,’ she says.
Maria does not speak on the way home, concentrates on the road ahead. I check my phone and see that I have missed four calls from her, the last at three o’clock in the morning. I watch her profile as she drives and I wonder at myself, at why I even considered meeting Saskia Gove for a drink. I recognise the streets we drive through but in the morning’s bright light everything seems different somehow, and I wonder whether it is because of the drugs still in my system, or the fact that I may now have to face life alone, without Maria. The thought causes a swelling of grief in my chest and throat and I lay my head against my seat’s headrest, close my eyes, feel the movement of the car as we head home.
But Maria is not somebody who will let a problem pass unchallenged. When we get to my house she points to the kitchen and says, ‘In there. Sit.’
I sit down at the kitchen table and Maria makes coffee and while she makes it she does not say anything, the silence brittle and charged. When the coffee is ready she pours me a cup, puts it next to me, sits opposite.
‘Did you sleep with her?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I don’t think so. She spiked my drink.’
‘Why were you having a drink with her in the first place?’
‘She’s Saskia Gove. I’m acting for her father, his will. You know that.’
‘Daniel.’ Maria’s voice is hard. ‘Don’t take me for an idiot.’
I nod. She is right. She deserves better. I tell her about my suspicions, the missing women, the fact that it is still happening, fourteen years on. Tell her that nobody wants to know and that I feel responsible, that I am the only person in the world who cares about what happened to them. CJ’s sister. What happened to her.
Maria listens and some of the hurt and hardness in her eyes dissipates. But not all. When I have finished she sighs, a deep inhalation, puts the heel of her hand to her mouth, and I can see that she is willing herself not to cry. She is silent for some time and when she has mastered herself she says, ‘You had a visitor. Last night.’
‘Who?’
‘Said he was Vincent Halliday. Daniel, I’ve heard of him. What was he doing on our doorstep?’
‘What did he want?’
‘He wanted you. Said you’d know why. He asked me to pass on a message.’
‘What was it?’
‘I don’t know. I told him to leave, told him I didn’t want to know.’
I rub my forehead. Halliday was here. Where Maria and CJ live.
‘You promised, Daniel. You fucking promised me.’ Maria’s voice is high and unsteady and I realise that she is not so much angry as scared, terrified.
‘I’ll deal with it,’ I say.
‘How?’ she says. ‘How, Daniel?’
‘Please, Maria.’
‘You stay out all night, won’t tell me where you’ve been. Gabe, what’s happened to him? Gangsters at our door. At our door, Daniel. This… You haven’t explained this.’
She stands up and walks to the counter, puts her hands on it, her back to me. I rub my hand through my hair, think of Halliday, of what he has put me through, me, Gabe, now Maria. I slam the kitchen table with my fist, make the cups jump. Look up at Maria, stand up, walk towards her.
‘You going to hit her?’
I turn. CJ is standing at the door. ‘What? No.’ I wonder how long she has been there. How much she has heard.
‘Fucking all alike, in’t ya?’
‘CJ,’ I say. ‘Come on.’
‘Adults lie. Can’t be trusted. Weren’t that what you said?’
‘You can trust me,’ I say.
CJ nods over at Maria, says, ‘Really.’
‘Really.’
She shakes her head and turns her back to me, walks away. Maria is still facing the counter, showing me her back too. I think again of the moment I decided to meet Saskia Gove for a drink and I honestly cannot blame either of them for refusing to acknowledge me. I need to stop this, stop all of this, now.
32
THE GYM WHERE Gabe encountered the Kurds was part of a chain, with changing rooms which were cleaned three times a day and step aerobics classes, exercise cycles, TV screens you could watch as you hit the treadmills. The gym where Kane trains has nothing in common with that place. It is in an industrial building between a wholesaler’s and a joiner’s; it has wire grilles over the high, narrow horizontal windows and a padlock hangs off the peeling wooden door. A sign above the door says LYONS BOXING & GYM. I watched Kane enter five minutes ago and I want to give him time to change, begin to work up a sweat before I go in. I do not want to go in. But I do not believe I have a choice.
I cross the street, push open the door. Inside a man is sitting behind a desk which looks like it was salvaged from an office clear-out. He is drinking a cup of tea. His face has a tattoo curving around his left eye like Mike Tyson although he is white, and underneath his vest his shoulders are huge, enormous, and dotted with pale marks from old acne which overuse of steroids has given him. He looks up at me as I walk in. Already I can smell the sweat of the gym, hear the impact of fists on heavy bags, the squeak of footwork, a sound system pushing out Faith No More.
‘Help you?’
‘You taking new members?’
The man raises his eyebrows like I have just given him unexpected news. ‘You want to join?’
‘Yeah.’
I am wearing running bottoms and a T-shirt and carrying a sports bag, and I am not sure why he is so surprised; I am not much smaller than him and cannot look too out of place.
‘You fight?’ he says.
‘Not recently.’
He looks at me properly, reappraises. ‘Plenty of gyms,’ he says.
‘Kicked out of the last one.’
‘Oh?’
‘Argument over the free weights.’
He doesn’t appear interested, lifts his mug, takes a swallow. I hear the door behind me open and close.
‘Here, Hundreds,’ the man says to whoever has entered. ‘Geezer wants to join.’
I turn and see a tall man with ears so damaged that they look like solid lumps of melted candle wax. He looks me up and down, does not seem impressed with what he sees, as if I am a car he has come to inspect which does not match its description.
‘We don’t do aerobics classes,’ he says. I cannot help but take offence at his dismissive tone, his casual contempt.
‘Pity,’ I say. ‘Pay good money to see you in a leotard.’
Hundreds does not react to this immediately but the man behind the desk laughs into his tea.
‘What did you say?’ says Hundreds, but I ignore him.<
br />
‘Go on then,’ the man behind the desk says. ‘Give me ten, you like it you can come back.’
I hand him a note. ‘Got lockers?’ I say.
He reaches behind him, passes me a key. ‘Don’t say too much,’ he tells me. He nods at the door that leads into the gym. ‘Some of them bite.’
I walk past him and through the door, into the gym. It has a concrete floor and painted brick walls. There is old exercise equipment and free weights and there are maybe fifteen men in here, working out, spotting each other, shouting encouragement. By the look of them the gym caters to men of violence. They all have the exaggerated muscles, the massive necks and shoulders of steroid users. There are scarred eyebrows and battered ears and sloppy tattoos. Those who look at me as I walk in regard me with the cool stares of men practised in intimidation. The atmosphere is as full of unreleased animal rage as a cage of pit bulls. I am sure that some of these men do bite. I suspect that more than one of them has killed.
There is a boxing ring with a sprung floor at one end of the gym. Kane is sparring with a man a lot bigger than he is and I can see by the way that he moves that he is good, fast and tricky, moving around his sparring partner as if the other man is in a daze. He has not seen me and I do not want him to, and I turn around, head for the lockers.
The changing room is L-shaped, long when I walk in with a turn at the bottom, more lockers around the corner. There is a wooden bench down the middle of the room. Some of the lockers are hanging open; many are closed and locked. I put my bag on the bench, unzip it, take out a crowbar. As I hold it I realise that my hands are shaking. The nearest man to me in the gym can only be four, five metres away through the locker room door. The door has pebbled glass in it, indistinct shapes behind. I cannot stay in here long. It takes an effort of will not to walk straight out, past the man behind the desk, back into the light of day.
I stand for a second, look at the room. No way of knowing which locker is Kane’s. Could be any of them. Fuck it. Start at the danger end, work my way back. I choose a closed locker, the one nearest the door leading to the gym. I insert the tip of the crowbar close to the lock and work it backwards and forwards, feel the thin metal bend and give. I put more into it, meet solid resistance. I can hear the faint voices of men through the door. I lean into the crowbar and the door gives with a crack. It swings open, right back, crashes into the locker next to it. I stop, cross to the bench, put my crowbar back in my bag and stand and wait. I watch the pebbled glass of the door, wait to see if the shape of anybody approaches. Ten seconds, twenty. Nobody comes.
I walk back to the locker, search through it. Kane was wearing a blue padded body warmer when he came to the gym and it is not in here, although I find a bag of small bottles filled with a clear liquid, needles. I push the door shut although the lock is broken and it won’t close completely. Take a breath. Next.
I pick the crowbar back up. My palms are wet with sweat and the crowbar is cold and hard to hold. My fingers do not feel as if they have any strength. I take a towel and hold it over the lock of the next door. Put my weight against the crowbar, bounce it in the gap. The door opens with a softer pop this time. I look through the locker. Nothing. I hear voices approaching the changing room. A man, swearing, another man laughing. They stop near the door. I take a better grip of the crowbar, do not move. Do not breathe. They are talking about somebody. I cannot make out the words. One of the men laughs again, loudly, and the voices move away.
I work faster, force open more doors. I can hear my breathing, it is coming out ragged. I look through clothes, jeans, trainers, shirts, people’s lunch, protein mixes, wallets, keys and drugs, always drugs. It is hot in the locker room and I can feel sweat running down the inside of my shirt, over my ribs. Nothing. No blue body warmer. Six lockers down. Do not let it be the last one. I need to be out of here. Should already be out of here. How is it that nobody has noticed?
I kneel down, work on a locker at the bottom of a column. I have a rhythm now, back, forth, harder and harder, feel the give and push hard, feel the door burst open, sound and force absorbed by the towel. The first thing I see is a bright blue body warmer. I squeeze it with my hands, feel the hard outline of a mobile phone in one of the pockets.
I hear a voice approaching, look behind me. I see a shape in the pebbled glass, dark, tall. I shove the crowbar under the bench in the middle of the room, do not have time to stand up, only to push the locker door to.
‘Fuck are you doing?’
It is Hundreds, from the gym’s lobby. I stand up, blue body warmer in one hand. ‘Changed my mind,’ I say. ‘Place isn’t what I’m looking for.’ I push the body warmer into my bag.
Hundreds is suspicious, looks around the locker room. I follow his gaze. One of the doors I have forced is hanging slightly open. From my angle I can see the bent lock and that the locker is full, a pile of untidily stored clothes. From where Hundreds is standing he cannot see. But he will soon. I walk over to him, push past him. He puts a hand on my chest.
‘Hold on.’
I shove his hand away, walk into the gym. Nobody is watching and I cross to the door to the lobby. I push it open.
‘Hey,’ Hundreds calls from behind me. ‘Fucking stolen our shit.’
The man behind the desk is getting up from his chair. I run past, open the door, close it. There is a hasp that I need to fit over a piece of metal. I hear movement behind the door, take a step back and pile my shoulder into the door as I fit the metal together, push through the padlock. There is impact the other side but there is a lot of me and the door does not move. I close the padlock. The gym must have a back door and I take off at a run to where my car is parked, a street away. But even as I run I know that nobody will be able to catch me, and my heart beats fast in exhilaration at what I have done, what I have in my bag.
I do not believe that Kane fits any definition our society has of normal; nor, though, do I believe that he is stupid. Still, I have to question what drives a man to keep incriminating footage on a mobile phone which he carries with him at all times. I suspect that he is a voyeur who takes pleasure in revisiting pain he has inflicted on others. I suppose, though, that in some way I should be grateful.
I drive to a shop off the town centre run by an Iranian. I tell him that I have forgotten my pass code and that I need to get into my phone. He smiles at me and says that it is a very common problem, surprisingly common, although I can see that he does not believe me for a second. He laughs and tells me that it will cost me fifty pounds and I tell him that is fine. It takes him less than five minutes to unlock the phone and I am not surprised that he laughed. Money doesn’t come much easier.
The footage I watch on Kane’s phone makes me question what progress we have made since we were locking heretics in red-hot armour, forcing them to swallow hot ashes. Men little older than children lying folded on their backs like thrown spiders and pleading for mercy as Kane and his crew punch them, kick, stamp on their heads, laugh. I wonder now whether he has to record what he does, prove his value as an enforcer to Halliday. After the first three clips I stop watching throughout, only check whether it is Rafiq Jahani in the frame. I feel conflicted, unwilling to watch these people’s pain and humiliation yet at the same time desperate for one of them to be Jahani. It is all that will save Gabe.
I suspect that Hundreds will have described my appearance to Kane and that he will recognise me from it, know that it was me who stole his phone. Instead of going back to my office I let myself into Gabe’s house, watch the footage at his kitchen table as the sun goes down and his windows darken. It feels right, somehow, to be here, in the house that Gabe was forced to flee. Sitting in his kitchen I remember Gabe’s father, a kind, gentle man who never raised his voice and who worked as a barrister in the City. He believed in justice, believed in it as a perfect, unequivocal ideal. I hope I will be able to find it for Gabe.
I open a video clip which has been shot at night. A man, a boy I should say, is in the frame. He looks sca
red but defiant. It is Rafiq Jahani. I hear Kane’s voice.
‘Fucking ripped him off.’
‘Didn’t.’
A hand appears, cuffs the boy across the head. I hear laughter. Kane is not alone. ‘Say again.’
‘I fucking didn’t.’
There is a pause, then a blurred fist knocks the boy over. The camera loses him for a moment, then finds him again. He is lying on the ground, the edges of paving stones showing that they are on a street, his face orange from an overhead light. There is blood coming from his nose.
‘Going to have to cut you.’
The boy spits to the side, looks at the camera. ‘Fuck you.’
This time it is a foot, catches him on the shoulder, then the temple. Rafiq Jahani wraps his hands around his head.
‘Where do you want it? Halliday wants to see it.’
Rafiq does not reply, glares upwards.
‘Take this,’ says Kane to somebody out of shot, hands the phone over. Glimpse of dark pavement, a building, night sky and then we are back on Rafiq Jahani, Kane speaking again.
‘Ribs. Pull your shirt up.’
‘I did what you asked. Fucking hit that man. What else?’
Kane’s arm moves and I catch the flash of a blade in the street light, there and gone. I am astonished at this boy’s bravery, and even though I know what ultimately happens I cannot help but root for him, as you root for a doomed hero in a film you have already watched.
Rafiq Jahani hawks blood and saliva and spits it up at Kane. ‘Fucking psycho,’ he says.
I am grateful that what happens next is a blur of frantic movement, lights, shadow, a man’s heavy breathing, the impact of blows. I do not hear a sound from Rafiq Jahani, as if from the moment Kane loses control he resigns himself to his fate, as if he knows that spitting in Kane’s face will be his last act of defiance. The sequence continues for fifteen, twenty seconds, then the camera steadies and Rafiq Jahani is lying on the pavement, dark blood pooling out from his body like spilled paint. It is silent apart from heavy breathing. I hear a voice say:
