Incinerator

by Niall Leonard

  The gym doors were unlocked, and although I was breathless and sweaty I took the stairs two at a time, half expecting to find Dean and another bunch of hired knuckleheads trashing the place. But the place was empty and silent and neat and tidy, and the floor had been mopped. I saw Delroy emerging from the direction of the kitchen, weary and demoralized, like a big old bull nosing around a meadow for shelter and rest.

  “Delroy?”

  “Finn, hey. I thought those bastards would keep you locked up all night.”

  “Thanks for earlier. That was one hell of a punch you laid on that guy.”

  “Ach, he was out of condition, and all over the place. Boy learned his fighting off Hollywood movies.” But for all his bravado there was a sad and bitter edge to Delroy’s voice that I had never heard before. I tried to lighten the mood.

  “You’ve done a great job cleaning up. I might have a lie-in tomorrow.”

  “We both can, I think,” said Delroy. “It’s about time.” He was moving from workout machine to workout machine, pretending to wipe them down, and avoiding my eye.

  “Del?” I said. “You OK?”

  “I never said thank you, Finn,” said Delroy. “For the chance to get back to work. I really appreciate everything you’ve done and all. Thing is, I can’t do this no more.” I saw his broad shoulders sag in defeat, and I thought, Not you, Delroy, not now …

  “Delroy, you can’t pack it in—I can’t run this place without you. I’m nothing at coaching.”

  “Neither of us can run this place, Finn. It was a stupid idea, and it’s cost you way too much.”

  “Don’t worry about that—”

  “One of us has to worry about it. This is money you’ll need to live on. I should never have encouraged you—you’re just a kid, your folks have gone, I should have tried to set you straight—”

  “Look, to hell with Sherwood, OK? We’ve seen him off once.”

  “Finn, please,” he begged. “Listen! We can’t keep this place going. Sam and Daisy have quit. Half tonight’s clients have cancelled their membership, they’re not coming back. And if just one of them claims for the damage to their car—”

  “That wasn’t our fault!”

  “That won’t matter! We’ll have no turnover to pay Sherwood his money—”

  “But that’s just what he wanted! That’s just why he did this!”

  “Then he’s won, and it’s over. Long as this place stays open it’s vulnerable and anyone in here is vulnerable. We have to shut this place down, before you lose all your money and someone gets hurt bad.”

  “No. No way—”

  Delroy flung down his cloth in frustration at my stubbornness. “It was never going to work. What do you think the insurance people would say if they’d found out I am the only qualified first-aider in the place? I can barely walk, for God’s sake. Someone is injured, I can’t even help you move them—”

  “We’ve managed so far! We just need to hire new staff, qualified—”

  “I’m not hiring anyone to put them in harm’s way. We been lucky, Finn, and we had fun, but it’s over. I’m done here.”

  He shuffled towards the door. My words were making no more impression on him than my fists used to when we sparred.

  “Close this place, sell it to one of the big chains, put the whole thing down to experience. You’re young, you’re smart, you’ll find some way to make a living. Hell, you have that place in Spain, you don’t even need to make a living.”

  “I can’t do this without you, Del.”

  “Then don’t. ’Cos I’m not doing it any more. I’m going home. Lock up after me, and keep them doors locked.”

  He limped past me towards the stairwell, his crutch clanking, and I heard him slowly make his way downstairs, step by step, as I stood there grinding my teeth with frustration, alone in that chilly empty barn of a place. I was furious with Delroy, and with myself, because I knew he was right.

  Sherwood had won this round.

  Delroy’s clean-up had been mostly symbolic and he had missed the corners, but then he probably had been leaning on the mop as much as swinging it. I finished off, wiped the kitchen down again, scrubbed the toilets and trudged down the stairs to lock the doors. They swung open before I was halfway down, and when I saw Nicky Hale walk in and look up my heart leaped, till I realized it wasn’t Nicky, of course.

  “Hi, Finn,” said Susan. “I was hoping I’d catch you at home.” She pulled at her hair as if she was ashamed of something she’d done and was scared to look at me. “The police came to see me today,” she said.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get you into trouble, I just thought it would be better if I admitted I’d spoken to you—”

  “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  I stood there on the stairs while she lingered self-consciously at the door. She clearly thought I was pissed off with her, so although I really didn’t feel like company I said, “Do you want a cup of tea or something?”

  “Or something would be nice,” she said. “Have you got any gin?”

  “We’ve got some surgical spirit.”

  “Er …”

  “Stick a slice of lemon in it, you can’t tell the difference.”

  “Seriously, have you got anything to drink?”

  “Tea,” I said.

  Among the bits and pieces I’d taken from the old house before I rented it out was my bedside light, but here there was nothing to stand it on, so it lit my attic from the floor upwards. The effect under the sloping ceiling was weird but still cosy somehow. Susan seemed at home, anyway, as she draped her jacket on a dining chair and sat back on my ripped and bulging sofa. I hoped no broken rusty spring would poke through and scratch her—she’d probably need a tetanus shot.

  “They showed me some photos of Nicky at border control, leaving the country.”

  “Using one of her passports,” I said.

  “Oh yeah. She has family in South America.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Half-sisters,” she said.

  “Yeah, right. Sorry, I keep forgetting, you’re so …”

  “Alike, I know, it’s weird. Sometimes I think about dyeing my hair or having a nose job.”

  “Na, don’t, fair hair suits you.”

  “You like it?” She ran her fingers through her blonde bob and looked at me, and suddenly I realized where this was going, or might be. The same thought seemed to occur to her, and take her just as much by surprise. She looked away, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Her dad was Brazilian. German-Brazilian. I used to say he was a Nazi on the run, just to wind her up. He left our mum when Nicky was two. Mum married again, had me, but Nicky was always her golden girl …” She tried to make it sound light-hearted, but I could hear the edge in her voice, and I knew how she felt; finding out your mother preferred someone else to you could kind of take the shine off your childhood. “My dad left when I was ten. We never heard from him again. Nicky was still in touch with hers … went over to visit when she was eighteen or so, worked there during her gap year, and again after she got her first from Oxford. She never told me anything about her other family, or even where they lived in Brazil. São Paulo or somewhere, I think, but …”

  Her words trailed off. She stared into her cup as if to divine the future from the leaves, but I’d used teabags so we had no future.

  “It’s late,” she said. “I suppose I should go.” She stood, carefully, so as not to bang her head, and I fetched her jacket from where I’d draped it over the back of my chair.

  “Do you feel relieved?” I said. Susan frowned. “I mean, now we know she’s safe and well and spending other people’s money?”

  “I don’t feel much of anything any more,” she said. “Do you?”

  “I feel bloody furious,” I said as I offered her her coat.

  She didn’t take it. “I’m sorry, Finn,” she said, and she reached for me, and this time I knew exactly where
this was going.

  Or I thought I did.

  I went in with my guard down, expecting her to offer consolation, but when she sank her teeth into my lip I realized Susan was just as angry as I was, and I was way outclassed. I might have been half as heavy again with twice her reach, but I’d never faced an opponent who gouged, scratched and bit with such abandon, and she had me on the ropes while I was still trying to figure out the rules. But I’m a quick learner, and I soon grasped the concept—there were no rules. She kept coming at me like a title contender, grabbing handfuls of my hair at the temple and swinging on it, but she relaxed her grip when I seized her wrists and pinned her back against the cold gable wall. The battle was hot and frantic and ferocious and fun, and not for a minute did I stop wishing it was Nicky driving her nails into my shoulders.

  Sitting in a café in Kew the next day I could still smell Susan on my skin, and I wondered if anyone else would. She’d stayed till two, then borrowed a shirt of mine—the blouse she’d arrived in was no longer in one piece—dressed quickly, and threw her leg over me where I lay in my unmade bed. She said nothing, just leaned down, grabbed my face and kissed me so hard she nearly split my lip. She smiled, but it wasn’t a satisfied smile—it was wistful, as if she’d been aware what I’d been thinking, but understood. When I came downstairs with her to let her out she whispered in the dark, “Thanks, Finn. See you.” She made our encounter sound so casual, almost accidental. I felt a twinge of guilt, tinged with resentment, that she’d seen through me and didn’t care for what she saw.

  “Hey, Finn. How’s it going?”

  Zoe pulled out the chair facing mine and slipped off her jacket. Wandering aimlessly in my thoughts I hadn’t even noticed her enter the café, though the place was pretty small, and empty apart from me and the monosyllabic old lady behind the counter listlessly making up sandwiches ahead of the lunch-time rush. I stood to say hello, not sure whether Zoe would let me hug her, but she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. Her full, firm body felt familiar against mine, and I hugged her back—a little too long, because I felt her tense, and knew she’d noticed the scent of another woman on me.

  “Thanks for coming, Zoe,” I said, and she grinned brightly, and the tension passed. Why the hell was she being so possessive anyway? I wondered. Zoe had kind of dented our friendship when she sold me out to those child traffickers who’d done a tap dance on my kidneys. I’d forgiven her, but we both knew she owed me a favour—to say the least—and I supposed that was why she was here.

  She ordered a cappuccino, and while we waited for it we made small talk about her move to a college up north to study IT. “Don’t you know all this anyway?” she said. “You’ve been following me on Facebook.”

  “I only look at the pictures,” I said. She knew why that was. The photos on her virtual wall told me all I needed to know. Although she was the same age as me, with no parents to tut or cluck or tell her off, she was already living the life of a student. That meant lots of drinking and parties and gigs and festivals, and every photo she posted seemed to show her in the middle of a crowd of blokes. Meeting her again, that didn’t seem so surprising. Now that she’d eased up on the eyeliner and put on some weight she looked more healthy and happy and normal, and less like a frazzle-tempered druggie with a sharpened steel comb under her coat. All the same, I’d noticed, her status read “not in a relationship” and for some reason I was pleased, though her status was no concern of mine.

  “What about you? How have you been?” It was nice of her to pretend we were here to catch up, when my online message to her had been so brief and impersonal. But she knew everything I wrote was brief and impersonal because it took me hours to tap out a sentence.

  I filled her in on recent events. She looked suitably aghast when I told her about Nicky, and angry when I told her about Sherwood and how he’d shut down my gym, and at last we came to the point.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to find out what happened,” I said.

  “I thought you knew what had happened.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know why it happened,” I said. “And I want to. I trusted Nicky. I didn’t think she wasn’t the sort of person who’d shaft me like that.” I saw Zoe stifle a bitter grin of regret. “Not without being forced to anyway,” I said. “And I’d like to know who forced her.”

  “What are you going to do, fly out to Brazil and start asking around? How’s your Portuguese?”

  I pulled Nicky’s smartphone out of my pocket and slid it across the table. Zoe looked down at it, then up at me, and she didn’t pick it up.

  “There are some emails and texts on there I need to trace,” I said. “I thought you, or maybe one of your geeky mates, could help.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “I’m sure you can think of a way to persuade them,” I said, and I wished I hadn’t when I saw the hurt in her eyes. I had forgiven her, and I didn’t mean to keep milking her mistakes, but I needed to know. “Please, Zoe. You’re the only person who can help.”

  She sighed, reached out and picked up the phone. “Which ones do you want me to trace?”

  “You’ll know them when you see them. Don’t switch it on in here—soon as it logs onto the network the cops will know, and they might come looking for it.”

  “Why don’t you let them?” asked Zoe. “Get them to trace these messages.”

  “They already tried, a few months back, and they got nowhere. Half the time the police can’t trace people who leave them a bloody name and address—they wouldn’t have a hope with a phone. Even if they did manage, it would take them months, and I don’t want to twiddle my thumbs that long.”

  Zoe slipped the phone into her handbag, glancing around the room as if to check for concealed surveillance cameras. With good reason, I reflected. She picked up her cup but saw the last dregs of her coffee had gone cold and put it down again.

  “Want another?” I said.

  “No thanks,” she said, and checked her own phone for emails, though I guessed she was really checking out the time. “You called her Nicky,” she said.

  “That’s her name,” I said.

  “I mean, she doesn’t sound like your lawyer. She sounds more like a friend,” she said.

  “She was,” I said. “She came to my mum’s funeral.”

  “You told me nobody came to your mum’s funeral,” said Zoe, and she looked oddly upset.

  “Hardly anybody. I didn’t really know her then.” And what the hell’s it got to do with you? I thought.

  “Some friend. You never really did know her, did you?”

  “Obviously not,” I admitted.

  “I worry about you, Finn. You seem to put your trust in the wrong people.”

  Like you, I wanted to say.

  “I’m learning,” I said.

  “Who are you seeing these days?”

  “No one in particular.” It was almost the truth. I’d met Susan maybe three times, and slept with her once, and even for me that hardly counted as commitment. But Zoe’s expression hardened as if I’d lied to her face, because I had lied to her face, and for a moment I thought she was going to take out Nicky’s phone and fling it back at me.

  “And do you trust her? This woman you’re not seeing?”

  “I don’t trust anybody,” I said. “That way I’m never disappointed.”

  Zoe pushed back her chair. “I’ll talk to the head of my department, see if he can find out their IP,” she said. I must have looked mystified, because she explained, “Whoever sent these messages, they’ll have an IP address, an Internet address. They’ll probably have tried to hide it or fake it, but that can be cracked if you know how.”

  “That would be great,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Zoe. “Was there anything else?”

  “I’ll walk you to the station,” I said.

  “I’m not headed that way,” said Zoe, but she didn’t say what way she was
headed. Then she seemed to soften, as if she was ashamed of sounding so much like a sulky teen. “Thanks for the coffee, Finn. It was good to see you. Take care, yeah?”

  She leaned down and kissed me, and her lips were soft and full, and gentler than Susan’s, and I felt a sudden pang of something, loss or regret. But feelings like that have never got me anywhere except in trouble.

  “Cheers,” I said, and I let her go.

  As I paid the bill I pondered whether I could afford a tip. I couldn’t, but I left one anyway. I emerged from the café, turned north and started to run.

  It wasn’t hard to figure out why Susan had jumped me, I thought. She had been angry at Nicky for skipping town for ever without so much as a goodbye, and she’d wanted to get her rocks off, and I’d happened to be there. I wondered now if she’d got it out of her system or whether she’d be back for seconds. I kind of hoped she’d come back, and I kind of didn’t, because I knew that really it was Nicky I wanted. I’d wanted her for a long time, and Susan might be closer to my age but she didn’t have Nicky’s wit or her laugh or the turn of her head. Also, Nicky had my money. And she kept her nails shorter … Those welts in my back had stung in the shower and they were smarting now as I picked up speed and ran towards Kew Bridge.

  A scrawny young mum shoving a stroller and dragging a fractious toddler along by the hand jerked back in alarm as the Merc convertible swerved towards her, bumped up on the pavement ahead of her and shot into its off-street parking space. She glared at the driver like she intended to give him a steaming earful when he got out, but he didn’t get out, and she pushed her buggy on down the street, swearing under her breath.

  Sherwood was still on the phone when he emerged, looking grim and lugging a slim leather attaché case that probably held nothing but a porn mag. When he saw me walking towards him from the door of his office where I’d been lurking he looked grimmer still and hesitated, maybe pondering whether he would be safer getting back into his car. Which was I more likely to dent, his bodywork or him? I’d expected Dean to be babysitting, since Sean was either still in prison or in plaster, but there was no sign of him. Little wonder Sherwood looked worried.