She snuggled up still closer. He thought she might be crying.
‘There,’ he whispered softly, ‘hush.’
‘I felt so lonely,’ she said, ‘so cold inside, and the day went on forever.
And everything I did…everything I said was just…’
Her body shook.
He lifted his hand and cupped it around the back of her nape, pushing his fingers into the delicately boned base of her skull, then gently angled her head under his chin, her cheek into his collarbone.
‘Save me,’ she implored him, pushing her smooth forehead against the gap in his shirt, but Beede didn’t hear her (Thank God he didn’t hear her – what could Beede do, after all?), only Danny heard and Danny said, ‘I’ll look after you. I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry any more. You’re perfectly safe here.’
‘I feel safe,’ she said, breathing into him, and he could feel her lips parting and the warmth of her breath on his skin.
Kane was standing in the steamy bathroom (the door propped open to improve the ventilation), carefully greasing back his wayward blond mane with the aid of a small quantity of coconut hair oil. He’d recently bathed and shaved, had applied a modest amount of cologne, was wearing a clean, grey t-shirt, a soft, white, Adidas hoodie and a new pair of dark-blue, engineered Levis. He looked pristine.
‘So,’ Gaffar said, wandering in and pulling off his leather jacket.
‘You speak for Kelly, eh?’
‘I had a call from Hinxhill at five,’ Kane said, perusing the blur of Gaffar in the fogged-up mirror. ‘Did you finally make it over there?’
‘Sure.’
‘And Kempe’s Corner?’
‘Sure.’
‘How was the weather?’
‘Urgh. Bad. Is rain, eh?’
‘And the scooter?’
‘Slow for start…’
Gaffar impersonated the engine with a series of dry, hacking coughs. ‘Piece of shit. Italia…’
He turned and indicated fastidiously towards the splashes of mud on the back of his trousers.
‘How was Martha?’ Kane wondered.
‘Crazy,’ Gaffar said. ‘She make me read from book, but…’ he shrugged.
‘The poetry?’ Kane smiled, fondly. ‘The tiny little yellow hardback? Emily Dickinson?’
Gaffar looked blank.
‘Or was it Blake this time?’
Gaffar shook his head. ‘I dunno. Was all crazy.’
‘Martha loves Emily Dickinson.’
‘Crazy woman.’
‘And Bert?’
‘Nothing. No words.’
‘Really…?’
Kane turned to face him, concerned. ‘He didn’t actually speak?’
‘Nothing. Jus, “Why you here? Where is this Kane?”’
‘Did he seem depressed at all?’
‘Sure he was depress.’
‘Was he clean?’
‘Clean?’ Gaffar frowned. ‘Sure he was clean.’
‘Well that’s generally a good sign. Whenever Bert gets seriously miserable his hygiene’s always the first thing to go. I’ll need you to keep an eye on that for me, okay?’
Gaffar nodded. Kane returned to his hair again. ‘Bert was pretty much a tramp when we first met – had this huge, long beard, filthy nails, lived in absolute squalor. Never washed. Was physically overwhelmed – he told me once – emotionally overwhelmed by the touch of water. Being caught out in a rainstorm would leave him virtually disabled – I mean for weeks. Beaten. Pummelled. He’s just wired all wrong. You’d be surprised how many people are, how difficult their lives can be…’
Gaffar nodded again, his eyes ranging, boredly, around the room. ‘The medication he’d been prescribed was a disaster,’ Kane continued, ‘totally inappropriate to the range of symptoms he had. His doctor simply couldn’t give a shit. Didn’t have a clue. He’s one of those old-school, stiff-upper-lip types who thinks a warm bath and a good meal are enough to cure 95 per cent of all human ills. My involvement with him goes way back. He actually cared for my mother before she died – kept her criminally undermedicated right up until the end. He’s an intergalactic twat…’
Gaffar slowly began unwinding Kane’s scarf from around his neck. He plainly wasn’t focussing.
‘I wondered where that thing’d gotten to,’ Kane observed.
Gaffar grunted, unapologetically.
‘So did he let you bring in his firewood?’
‘Huh?’ Gaffar stopped unwinding.
‘Bert. Did you bring in his firewood?’
‘Sure. Sure. And I do wash up, like you say. I turn on radio, for bit music, and then…’
Gaffar threw up his hands, grimacing.
‘Fuck. You messed with his radio?!’ Kane spun around, horrified.
‘Bert has ears like a friggin’ bat, I told you that. He’s very sensitive. Incredibly sensitive…’
‘I have chicken,’ Gaffar said, thumbing over his shoulder, ‘is roast, whole.’
‘Yeah?’ Kane’s horror was immediately assuaged by the prospect of food. ‘Is it still hot?’
He sniffed at the air, hungrily.
‘Sure. You wan eat? You go out?’
‘Go out? In this weather? No way.’
‘Oh. Okay…’
Gaffar gave Kane’s smart outfit a meaningful once over then shrugged and wandered off.
Kane held his hands under the warm tap until the grease melted from his fingertips, then he strolled into the living-room, threw himself down on to the sofa and lifted his bare feet – with a slight wince – on to the coffee table. On the tv was a dramatic re-enactment of a true-life adventure in which two men were trapped high on a mountain in a raging blizzard. They’d tied themselves together, for safety, but one man had just slipped off a sheer precipice and was now dangling, unsteadily, in the pitch dark, hundreds of feet below the other.
The camera – having investigated the unenviable circumstances of the fallen man in pornographic detail – suddenly switched back to studying the plight of the man who hadn’t fallen. He was struggling to sustain the weight of his partner. He couldn’t pull or grip on to the rope properly. He was exhausted. His fingers were severely frost-bitten. He was in serious danger of slipping down himself.
‘Cut the the rope, man!’ Kane exclaimed, leaning forward and gently massaging one of his feet. ‘It’s his own stupid fault. He’s just gonna drag you down there with him…’
As he spoke he peered at his foot. He frowned. His feet looked different, somehow. The toes appeared compressed, almost squashed, as if they’d been squeezed – over time – into a bizarre, triangular mould. The big toe slanted dramatically inwards, and there was noticeable callusing on several of the smaller toes.
He inspected his other foot. It looked similarly mis-shapen. He wiggled his toes. They felt stiff, almost arthritic –
Hmmn
He leaned back again, grimacing, remembering his mother. He remembered her feet – her dancer’s feet: distorted, bulbous, over-arched and ugly – he remembered massaging them for her sometimes, as a boy, as a special treat.
While considering his mother’s feet he noticed a slight, fluttery feeling in his stomach (which he promptly dismissed as an excess of appetite –
When did I last eat?).
He wriggled his toes again (then again, almost obsessively), in a determined bid to try and loosen them up a bit.
Gaffar, meanwhile, was in the hallway, whistling jauntily, dishing up the chicken. He served it with a cold ratatouille, some hummus and several toasted pockets of pitta bread.
He brought two plates through and passed one to Kane with the useful addition of a small piece of kitchen roll to be employed as a serviette.
‘You’re a God,’ Kane said, taking it from him and swinging his feet back down on to the floor again.
Gaffar sat next to him, then glanced over and espied (with a disapproving cluck) Kane’s newly greased head pressed up against the upholstery. He nudged Kane to make him lean for
ward, then placed a spare piece of kitchen roll over the headrest to try and preserve the fabric from the impact of his hair oil.
‘Aw, thanks, honey,’ Kane said.
‘So…’ Gaffar stretched out his legs as he grappled with a chicken wing, ‘you speak for Kelly?’
‘Yeah…’ Kane nodded, leaning back again, balancing his plate on his stomach, tearing off a small piece of bread and scooping up some ratatouille, ‘Yeah. She told me all about how you trashed her salad.’
‘Wah?!’ Gaffar gaped.
‘She said you trashed her salad and then you snogged her. She was absolutely, fuckin’ livid about the whole thing…’
Kane chewed on his mouthful, dispassionately.
‘For why she say this?’ Gaffar asked, infuriated.
‘Did you happen to see Beede lately?’ Kane wondered, swallowing.
‘Beede?’
‘Yeah. He’s not at home and he wasn’t at the laundry…’
‘I been work, eh? Hard work,’ Gaffar gesticulated irritably, ‘how I’m suppose see him there?’
He snorted, infuriated.
‘Do they eat much hummus in Turkey?’ Kane wondered, peering at it, inquisitively.
‘Sure.’
‘Really? I always had it pegged as a Greek speciality.’
Gaffar shrugged. ‘Is Greek, Arab, Turk…’
The mountaineer who hadn’t fallen suddenly began hacking with a knife at the rope which suspended his partner in a desperate bid to save his own life.
‘They crucified him for this,’ Kane said. ‘Did you ever read about it?’
‘Huh?’
Gaffar squinted at the screen.
‘He cut him off. It’s a total breach of climbing etiquette. But he’d’ve died otherwise, for sure. The real irony is that even though they both actually survived as a direct consequence of what he did, he was treated like some kind of criminal – a pariah – in mountaineering circles for years afterwards…’
Kane scooped up some hummus on a second chunk of pitta. ‘There are many imponderables in this life of ours, Gaffar,’ he murmured, ‘but one irreducible fact is that people who climb mountains are invariably cunts.’
‘Sheeesh,’ Gaffar exclaimed, gazing at the screen. ‘What a treacherous rat! Is he seriously gonna cut that?’
‘Kelly told me to sack you,’ Kane said, gently popping the bread into his mouth.
‘Pard?’
Gaffar turned from the tv, with a slight start, at the exact moment that the knife finally sliced through the rope.
‘Yeah…’ Kane chewed and then swallowed as the suspended mountaineer dropped, like a stone, into an apparently bottomless icy fissure. ‘She wanted me to fire you. Seriously. She claimed you were romancing her mother.’
‘Huh?’
‘Dina Broad.’
Kane smirked. He performed an obscene gesture with his hands.
Gaffar looked astonished. ‘Dina Broad?’ He paused. ‘Dina Broad?!’
‘Yeah. And she was furious about Gerry, too. She said all you needed to do now was fuck her sister, then you’d’ve tried it on with her entire family…’
Kane chuckled as he tore off another piece of bread, his eyes returning, irresistibly, to the drama on the screen. ‘Which I actually thought was kinda funny…’
‘Sister?’ Gaffar was still struggling to catch up.
‘Yeah. She has a sister. A fucking psychopath. Lives in Gillingham. You ever been there?’
Gaffar shook his head. Kane suddenly winced and then quickly adjusted the position of his right foot.
‘Don’t bother. She’s a Nazi. Built like a brick shithouse…’
‘All this Broad girls is big mouth, huh?’ Gaffar threw down his chicken wing, piqued.
‘You better believe it.’
Gaffar glowered at the tv. The falling mountaineer had been fortunate enough to land on a small, jutting shelf, about 20 metres into the icy fissure. He lay there, unconscious, for a while.
‘It’s always been kinda hard to gauge these things with Kell,’ Kane mused, ‘she’s a Broad, after all – but I got the weird impression this afternoon that she was protesting a little too much, you know? Like somewhere deep inside of her – and I mean way deep inside – she might’ve been feeling just a teensy-bit conflicted, a teensy bit jealous, if you see what I mean…’
‘Huh?’
Gaffar’s head snapped around. ‘Jealous? For why?’
Kane shrugged. ‘That’s the million dollar question, my friend.’
Gaffar stared at him, quizzically.
‘Her mother’s a total piss-taker – that goes without saying – but Kelly’s hardly a pushover. It might seem that way at first – to the casual observer – but the dynamic between them is so much more complex…It’s hardly a coincidence, for example, that Kelly’s so skinny and Dina’s so fat. There’s a measure of co-dependency there. Kelly doesn’t just starve herself but she actively facilitates Dina’s weight problem. It’s like she derives some strange kind of pleasure from feeding her mother, from fattening her up, from doing everything she can to effectively disable her. It’s a complicated relationship. For Kelly, looking after Dina – being indispensable to Dina – makes her feel important. It’s an essential part of how she places value on herself…’
Gaffar frowned.
‘…Then suddenly here you come along with your massages, your Mediterranean good looks, your shopping trips…’
Kane smiled, inscrutably, as he pulled a stray piece of skin off a thick slice of chicken breast and then shoved it into his mouth.
‘But Kelly is for asking me to look after this mother!’ Gaffar exclaimed, indignantly.
‘Yeah…’ Kane chewed and swallowed. ‘Who can possibly understand the vagaries of the female mind, eh?’
Gaffar turned back to the tv, dissatisfied.
‘See that?’ Kane said. ‘He’s fractured his leg. The rope’s been cut so he can’t climb back up. He knows that if he stays put he’s gonna die, so his only possible chance of survival is to gradually lower himself down – into the darkness – still further…’
They continued eating.
‘Did you happen to notice,’ Kane suddenly quizzed him, ‘how Beede’s locked the door into his flat?’
‘Beede?’
‘Yeah. He locked his door.’
‘Sure.’ Gaffar nodded.
‘You noticed that?’
‘Sure. In morning. I take…uh…dish? For cook? But door is lock.’
‘The really strange thing about it,’ Kane’s eyes remained focussed on the screen, ‘is that Beede never locks his door. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that door locked. I didn’t even know that there was a lock on it.’
‘Maybe he fear thief?’ Gaffar speculated.
‘Kelly did mention how she’d asked you to steal some papers for her,’
Kane volunteered.
‘Sure.’
Gaffar didn’t trouble himself in denying it. ‘But this lock is before I steal paper.’
‘Before?’ Kane frowned. ‘So how’d you go about it?’
‘Uh…I steal from Tesco,’ Gaffar murmured, as if this key piece of information was of no real interest, ‘from Beede bag.’
‘Tesco’s?’
Kane looked at him askance.
‘Ya.’
‘You saw Beede at Tesco’s?’
‘Sure.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure.’
‘But…’ Kane frowned, confused ‘…but Beede hates Tesco’s. He never goes to Tesco’s. He disapproves of Tesco’s.’
As Kane spoke he reached down again, wincing, towards his foot. ‘Okay,’ Gaffar opined, unhelpfully.
‘Well it’s a fact,’ Kane insisted, ‘Beede hates Tesco’s. He loathes the impact of big supermarkets on the High Street. He always shops locally. It’s not just an idle preference, it’s ideological.’
Gaffar shrugged.
Silence
‘So what was he doing exactly when
you saw him at Tesco’s?’ Kane wondered.
‘Uh…’
Gaffar picked at his teeth a while, thoughtfully.
‘Was he shopping?’
‘Sure.’
‘Did you happen to see what he was shopping for?’
‘I see him uh…’ Gaffar frowned, ‘is in front supermarket, yeah?
With lady. He is talk with this lady.’
‘A woman? What did she look like?’ Kane’s chin suddenly jerked up.
‘Did she have brown hair? Did she have long, brown hair?’
‘No. No brown hair. Is blonde. You know…is this lady…uh…Mon-key…’
‘What?’
’Mon-key.’
‘A monkey lady?’
As he spoke, Kane’s shoulder convulsed, dramatically.
‘Fuck.’
He grabbed at it, then grabbed at his plate, to stop it from falling.
Gaffar stared at him, perplexed. ‘No monkey, Mon-key. Laura Mon-key.’
‘Oh shit…I get ya,’ Kane exclaimed, ‘Monkeith. Laura Monkeith…’
Gaffar snapped his fingers.
‘So he was talking to Laura?’
‘Sure.’
‘Outside Tesco’s?’
‘Sure.’
‘Wow.’
Kane dwelt on this for a moment, still rubbing at his shoulder. ‘So lemme get this straight: they’re in the middle of this private conversation, yeah? This intimate conversation – close to the trolleys, out front, when you – Gaffar – just suddenly, quite randomly, roll up and surprise them?’
‘Sure.’
‘How very odd…’
Gaffar shrugged, indifferent.
‘But you were discreet?’ Kane asked. ‘With Laura, I mean?’
‘Sure,’ Gaffar nodded, blithely. ‘I go. I say hello.’
Gaffar re-enacted a jovial wave.
Kane winced (this wasn’t the response he’d been angling for). ‘And what did Laura do? Did she acknowledge you? Did she seem pissed off at all?’
Darkmans Page 52
