Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  Gaffar mimed himself retching, in total disgust.

  ‘Beautiful?’ Beede seemed taken aback. ‘Kane actually said that?’

  Gaffar nodded.

  ‘Good gracious.’

  ‘Yes…’ Gaffar tried his utmost to seal his advantage. ‘Like…like beautiful machine. Automata.’

  Beede’s face dropped. ‘Oh. Yes. Of course. I see what you mean…’

  He suddenly looked tired again. He sat down, stiffly, on the sofa, pinched his sinuses between his fingers and remained – hunched over, his elbows pressing into his knees – for what seemed like an age. Gaffar hung around the doorway, uncertain whether or not to enter. After a certain duration he subtly drew Beede’s attention to his continuing presence with a polite cough.

  Beede opened his eyes and glanced over. ‘I’m sorry, Gaffar,’ he apologised, ‘it’s been a long old day and I’m not much in the way of company…’

  Gaffar nodded, mutely, and took a small step back into the halflight.

  Beede instantly took pity on him. ‘But you said you had a problem of some kind…?’ he asked, straightening up, pushing back his shoulders, taking off his glasses (placing them, carefully, on to the arm of the sofa) and rubbing his face, vigorously, with both hands.

  Gaffar scowled. ‘Problem? No. No.’

  He shook his head, emphatically.

  ‘I see…Well, I must’ve misheard you, then.’

  Beede picked up his glasses and carefully reapplied them. He stared at Gaffar, enquiringly.

  Gaffar took a step closer. ‘Is just…you could hardly call it a problem…More of a…’ he bit his lip, ‘a puzzle…A hiccough. Yes. Hiccough. Something which…which recurs. Something which infuriates and disrupts, which persists. What’s the English word for that?’

  ‘For what?’

  Gaffar hiccoughed.

  ‘A hiccough?’

  ‘Hey presto!’

  ‘Right…’ Beede patiently awaited further elucidation, but none was forthcoming.

  ‘Okay, a hiccough, eh?’ he gamely struggled to improvise. ‘So let’s see…Is it an immigration issue, perhaps, or…or something connected to the local authorities?’

  Gaffar flapped his hand, dismissively.

  ‘Is it policemans?’

  Gaffar snorted.

  ‘Is it Kane?’ Beede suddenly looked worried. ‘Is he forcing you to do something that you feel uncomfortable with?’

  At the mention of Kane’s name, Gaffar placed his finger over his lips, hurried into the room and closed the door, gently, behind him.

  ‘Is Kane upstairs?’ Beede whispered. ‘Don’t you want him to hear us?’

  ‘Kane is…uh…Kane is out,’ Gaffar spoke at normal volume, ‘in car.’

  ‘Oh…’ Beede paused. ‘So is somebody else up there? The redhead?

  Kelly? Is it Kelly Broad? Is it something she’s said?’

  ‘No…’ Gaffar shook his head. ‘But is with her – this Kelly – I have…’ he gesticulated.

  ‘Hiccough,’ Beede filled in, helpfully.

  Gaffar strolled over, grabbed Beede’s helmet, the post and his bag, placed them – carefully – on to the kitchen counter, then sat down next to him.

  ‘What I need is…uh…’ he scowled, exasperated, clenching his hands together, earnestly, ‘I need friend…Friend?’

  Beede stared at him, unblinking. For some reason his heart was sinking.

  He had a bad feeling.

  ‘Okay…’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes. In fact more of a…a confidant…’ Gaffar paused, speculatively, ‘actually, no. Not confidant. Just…just someone discreet, someone who doesn’t need me to confide in them. Someone who takes things at face value. That kind of a person…’

  Beede said nothing.

  Gaffar cleared his throat, carefully.

  ‘Yes. So what I need…uh…I need for you, Beede, old man…uh…’

  Gaffar swore under his breath.

  ‘Just relax,’ Beede counselled him, ‘there’s no rush. Take your time…’

  ‘Is so. Yes. Is good,’ Gaffar nodded, ‘for because…uh…What I need is a favour, okay? Do you get me? Just a small favour. But I don’t want Kane to find out about it. I don’t want anyone to know about it…’

  ‘A favour? From me?’

  Gaffar nodded.

  ‘Is it money?’

  Gaffar blinked. Money?!

  He glared at Beede, insulted. ‘What kind of opportunist skank do you take me for?’

  ‘Oh. Right. Sorry. So not money…’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. It’s just a small demand on your time…’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In tomorrow morning…’

  ‘Okay.’

  Gaffar blinked (Wow. That was considerably easier than it might’ve been). ‘Really okay?’

  Beede shrugged. ‘Sure. As long as whatever you want me to do isn’t illegal and doesn’t take too long…’

  ‘Not long,’ Gaffar butted in, ‘just few minute. Five minute. Is all.’

  ‘Then that’s fine. It’s a deal.’

  Beede reached out his hand and Gaffar took it. They shook.

  ‘So what do you want me to do, exactly?’ Beede couldn’t resist asking. Gaffar grimaced, he dropped Beede’s hand. ‘I need for you to go shop. I need for you to get for me, I, Gaffar…’

  He pointed to his chest.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I need…’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Salad.’

  Beede stared at him, blankly. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Salad,’ Gaffar repeated (with an involuntary shudder).

  ‘Salad?’

  Gaffar nodded.

  ‘Sorry…Did you just say “salad”?’

  ‘Yes. Salad. Salad.’

  ‘Salad? Like lettuce? Or tomatoes? That kind of salad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. And you need me to do that? You need salad but you have…you have no money, perhaps…?’

  ‘Oh no. I have money,’ Gaffar insisted, ‘I say before…I say I have money. Money is no problem. Kane give money – money for salad.’

  As Gaffar spoke, Beede was staring down at the rug, with a frown.

  He was trying to think of the Turkish word for salad.

  ‘Leaf!’ he finally exclaimed.

  ‘Not “leaf!”’ Gaffar snapped. ‘Salad, you fool. Salad. Salad. Salad.

  Salad. Salad.’

  ‘You want me to go shopping for you?’

  ‘No,’ Gaffar shook his head, ‘I shop. I buy shop. But you – you – you shop salad.’

  ‘So who’s the salad for?’

  Beede glanced down at the rug again. ‘Kelly. Kane’s whore.’

  ‘And you want me to take the salad to her?’

  ‘No. I take. So long…’ Gaffar made a complex motion with his hands. ‘So long as it’s completely covered up. Packaged up. In a bundle. Wrapped up. And I don’t have to look at it.’

  ‘How odd,’ Beede murmured.

  ‘What?’ Gaffar straightened his back, defensively.

  ‘My rug.’

  ‘Rug?’

  ‘Yes. My rug.’ Beede pointed. ‘I thought there was something wrong with it, and now I realise…There’s nothing wrong, as such, but it’s been…it’s been turned around…’

  Gaffar glanced down.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he grinned, ‘I do that.’

  ‘What?’ Beede seemed confused. ‘You turned my rug around?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Kane.’

  ‘Kane?’

  ‘Yes. Kane dropped his cigarette on it – or, to be completely accurate – that stinking cat knocked it off the little table with its pesky tail while he was searching through your books. Burned a small hole in it. Kane went nuts. So I told him I could fix it – told him my mother and my grandmother worked on the carpet looms of Diyarbakir…you know, blah blah…’ Gaffar scoffed, jovially ‘…and – blow me – if he wasn’t completely taken in by it! Swallowed it whole!
So I sent him off to your bedroom – to seek vengeance on that filthy puss – then, quick as a flash, I’d moved out all the furniture, turned the carpet around, and placed it back…’

  Gaffar jumped up, to demonstrate. ‘Oh my God! When he returned he fell to his knees, looking for the place where the burn had been…’ Gaffar fell to his knees, with a theatrical gasp. ‘You should’ve seen it! It was hilarious! His face was a picture!’

  He glanced over at Beede. Beede did not appear to be overwhelmed by hilarity.

  ‘Don’t worry…’ Gaffar tried to pacify him, ‘it’s only a tiny mark. You can barely even tell from this angle. And – let’s face it – this carpet’s hardly a priceless work of craftsmanship, is it? Just some cheap reproduction…’ Gaffar sniggered, ‘I mean the Minaret of Iam? Afghanistan?!’

  ‘I appreciate your candour,’ Beede smouldered.

  ‘Natch,’ Gaffar swiped a hand through the air.

  ‘So Kane was going through my books, you say?’ Beede murmured, tightly. ‘Do you have any idea why?’

  Gaffar shrugged.

  ‘Because that just seems very…’ Beede scowled, ‘strange. Strange behaviour. For Kane.’

  ‘First he looked into the envelope,’ Gaffar tried to remember the exact order of things, ‘the brown envelope with the papers inside which Kelly – his whore – brought with her. He read them for a while and his face was like…’

  Gaffar pulled an expression of condensed fury.

  ‘This envelope?’

  Beede grabbed the aforementioned brown envelope from underneath an old newspaper.

  ‘Uh…Yes.’

  ‘But why would he look in this envelope?’

  Beede pulled the papers out of it and inspected them, his eye settling, just briefly, on Winifred’s handwritten note.

  Gaffar shrugged again. ‘I no idea. All I care for is salad.’

  Beede gazed up at him, distractedly.

  ‘Of course,’ he eventually murmured, ‘the salad.’

  ‘In morning. We go Tesco Supermarket – Crooksfoot – big Tesco. Near hospital.’

  ‘Right. Yes…’ Beede struggled to re-focus. ‘My shift starts at ten.

  So…uh…nine-thirty, say? Would you like a lift down there? On the bike?’

  ‘No!’ Gaffar widened his eyes, warningly. ‘We meet in front.

  Secret, yes? By…uh…’

  He made a pushing motion.

  ‘The trolleys?’

  ‘Bingo.’

  ‘Okay. Out front, by the trolleys,’ Beede confirmed, ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘God bless you.’

  Gaffar took a small step back – bending his knee, dipping his head, graciously, his hands clasping together – as if offering his humble obeisance to the old man. But then he paused, mid-genuflection, peeking up through the deep pile of his luxuriant brows and indicating towards the rug, with a sly grin.

  ‘So this was damn good joke, huh?’

  TWO

  He kept telling himself that it was the foot – the verruca – which was encouraging his thoughts to dwell on her. A small and previously dormant wart (hardly the world’s most alluring thing) which was suddenly throbbing and smarting and twingeing him –

  Twingeing…

  Is that really a word?

  Although –

  Uh…

  Now just hang on there…

  – was the foot really the spur? The root of it all? The instigator? I mean couldn’t it just as easily be the other way around? ie his thoughts being absorbed by her –

  The soft voice

  The smooth fall of her hair…

  – then frantically retreating –

  The birthmark/patronising manner/pyromaniac son/his psychotic father

  – and so turning, instead, by…by proxy, you might almost say, to the foot (which – because of some strange, fucked-up biological imperative –

  Hysterical –

  Didn’t she actually say that?)

  – had become the unwitting locus – the physical expression – of all his rancour.

  Wasn’t the wart just a collaborator? A patsy? Wasn’t it simply giving him carte blanche to think about – to dwell upon – to linger…

  On her?

  Elen?

  Or…

  God –

  Worse still (standing quietly behind her, almost eclipsed by her shadow):

  Beede?

  No.

  No. It was the foot. It was the wart. It was the twingeing, the itching –

  Now that truly is disgusting…

  – and the occasional, entirely arbitrary dart of stabbing pain –

  Ouch.

  There it goes again…

  It was definitely the foot. Because the more he dwelt on it, the more he realised that these irritating symptoms had been solidly in evidence since well before Monday’s fateful meeting. Not quite so patently – so obviously – as they were now, not nearly so…so belligerently – but they had been there.

  Although –

  Yes…

  – he didn’t mind admitting (on the subject of mental unease etc) that he’d been somewhat alarmed (shaken up, even) by the letter from W. From Winnie. From Winifred. Because so far as he was aware (which wasn’t very far – he couldn’t honestly remember the last time he’d bothered asking Anthony – her father – about her general health/happiness/wellbeing) she’d moved permanently to Leeds (the university. Had some kind of fancy, post-graduate position in the History Department there).

  He hadn’t seen her for several years –

  Four –

  At the very least

  And yet here was Beede, his father (dull old Beede, musty old Beede –

  Mysterious old Beede?

  Secretive old Beede?

  Randy old Beede?! –

  Urgh.

  – Kane shuddered), conducting some kind of secret, but oddly intimate relationship with her (I mean all the stuff about the Madeira cake. Why would Beede give a damn about such trivia? Did Beede even eat cake? Did the fact of cake even offer up a tiny blip on Beede’s psychological radar?

  Because you wouldn’t…

  Cake?!

  …you wouldn’t even mention the cafeteria unless there was some kind of shared background in tea or food or…

  Did Winifred even like cake?

  He struggled to think. He tried to remember. Cake. Sharing cake.

  Enjoying cake together…

  Nope.

  Nothing.

  Sharing tabs. Having sex. Smoking dope. Enjoying blow-backs. Yeah.

  But cake?

  Winifred Shilling – pill-fiend extraordinaire – sitting quietly with a fragrant pot of Earl Grey at her elbow in a suburban tearoom somewhere?

  Eh?!

  Kane snorted, contemptuously.

  Nah).

  He glanced down –

  Damn

  The tip of his spliff had dropped off into his lap. And there was still a small –

  Fuck!

  – ember…

  He cuffed it from his jeans and down on to the floor. He checked the fabric – no hole, but a tiny, brown…

  Bugger

  He took a final, deep drag –

  Nope…

  Dead

  – then tried to push the damp dog-end into the ashtray, but the ashtray, it seemed, was already full to capacity. He frowned, then tutted, fussily. Some fool had shoved a cigarette packet in there –

  Gaffar…

  – he tried to remove it, manoeuvring it out so as not to spill ash everywhere. As the packet came free he saw – with a slight start – that it wasn’t actually what he’d thought –

  Not a packet…

  He unfolded it, thinking it might be some kind of supermarket scratchcard. But no. A card – yes, certainly – but not a scratchcard. A playing card. A Jack. A Jack of Hearts. He gazed at it, blankly, as he shoved his dog-end into the ashtray. Then he blew on the card (to clean off the ash) and slipped it, with a small sm
ile, into his pocket. As he pushed in his hand he felt another card. He frowned –

  What…?

  Then he remembered. The card he’d taken from his father’s book. The business card –

  Yeah?

  He pulled it out. But it wasn’t the business card. It was another playing card. A second playing card. He stared at it, scowling.

  The Joker.

  The Joker?!

  He delved back into his pockets again, searching for that other card – the business card.

  Nothing.

  Where’d it go?

  And then he remembered the book. Beede’s book…The one he…