Incinerator

by Niall Leonard

  “What exactly was this unfortunate situation?” I said.

  He glared at me, trying to look fierce. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I noticed,” I said, and reaching out gripped his handlebars and held them. I hated bullies, true, but Nicky had clearly tried being nice to him, and got nowhere. Zeto glared at me some more, and I stared back at him, and he blinked and looked down.

  “There was a boy in my parish—not a boy, a teenager … about your age. He was from a—problem family. He came to me for advice, for counselling, but he wouldn’t listen to anything I said, kept insisting it was me who was—confused, not him. And when I suggested he seek help elsewhere, he …”

  “Took it badly?”

  “He said he’d expose me. Slander me, say I’d assaulted him.”

  “Could he prove anything?”

  “He didn’t have to.” Zeto’s voice trembled, and I sensed the black despair that had sent him the wrong way down the motorway. “Nothing improper occurred,” he insisted lamely. “But—once an accusation like that is made, a man in my position … people assume the worst.”

  “Mud sticks,” I said.

  Zeto nodded, I think because he couldn’t talk. After what I’d just witnessed happening in Lovegrove’s car, I didn’t entirely believe Zeto’s version of events, but it didn’t matter. Zeto seemed to believe it. I was willing to bet that even if this kid had produced a high-definition video of whatever it was Zeto had got up to, Zeto would go on denying the truth, claiming it was all CGI and fancy editing. But that part wasn’t important any more.

  “And you didn’t tell Nicky any of this?”

  “She asked me to undergo psychiatric evaluation.” He sounded almost offended. “But why would I talk to a psychiatrist about someone else’s sick, ridiculous fantasy?” That explained the empty report.

  “And Lovegrove found out?” I said.

  “He interviewed me right after—my motorway accident.” The suicide attempt, I wanted to say, but Zeto was so determined to deny everything it would have been like waking a sleepwalker. “It was totally improper, I was in shock,” went on Zeto. “There was no lawyer present. I confided in Lovegrove, and …”

  “He took advantage?”

  “He offered to straighten everything out. Arrange to misfile the blood test results, to speak to the boy who’d made the accusation, and I thought—I thought it would all go away.”

  “Obviously he was lying.”

  “My wife somehow found out, about the boy’s accusations, and she left. And Lovegrove keeps asking to meet me, to discuss the case, claims there’s a problem that needs to be dealt with, and it always comes down to—”

  Rape, I thought. Maybe not the exact legal definition of it, but ultimately that’s what it was: sex by coercion. By the sound of it Lovegrove was locked in the closet, just like the reverend—he was getting off on the power he had over Zeto, and forced blowjobs were his way of demonstrating it. And Zeto was so scared of the truth—of everyone else knowing it, of knowing it himself—that he had been going along with it.

  I took my hand off the handlebars and stood aside. Zeto stood there like he was waiting for me to give him permission to leave, and I felt a twinge of shame at being one more big thug he had to placate. In the dim distance what sounded like a cracked church bell started ringing.

  “That means they’re locking the gates,” said Zeto.

  “We’d better leave, then,” I said. “Don’t want to get stuck in here all night, never know what sort of pervs we’ll bump into.”

  He didn’t laugh—maybe he thought I was serious—but he seemed to loosen up a bit. He wheeled his bike towards the gate and I walked alongside him.

  “Did Nicky say anything to you about Lovegrove?” I said.

  “She didn’t like him very much,” said Zeto. That didn’t surprise me—I’d never met the guy, and I loathed him. “I know she was asking questions about him, about his record.”

  That would explain the photo of Lovegrove in Zeto’s file. At the same time it occurred to me that if Nicky had been asking questions about Lovegrove, maybe Lovegrove had got to hear about it. He had had as much to lose as Zeto if the truth came out—more, since he was a copper. Yeah, the Met was supposedly all diverse and inclusive these days—if you believed their PR—but Lovegrove’s little sideline would almost certainly land him in prison, where tolerance for gay ex-coppers was in extremely short supply.

  I wondered where Lovegrove had been the night Nicky left the country, and whether her black eye had been a parting gift from him.

  Zeto hesitated before climbing onto his bike. “I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention anything that happened this evening to anyone,” he said hesitantly.

  I’m sure you would, I thought. I had no intention of telling anybody, but I didn’t say that, because I’d just remembered something else that had been bugging me.

  “Can I ask how Nicky came to be your solicitor anyway?” I said.

  “I was her vicar for a while. In fact, I married her and Harry,” Zeto said, with a touch of pride that sounded odd in the circumstances. When I said nothing he went on, “She came to me for counselling.” I still said nothing. Zeto was getting worried, I realized, because I hadn’t promised to keep his secret, and it seemed the less I said the more eager he was to volunteer.

  “She had a, a relative,” stammered Zeto, “with a drug problem.”

  You mean a husband, I thought. But this little lie was Zeto’s way of convincing himself he hadn’t betrayed a confidence. I still said nothing.

  “He was a gambler too,” said Zeto, “and got badly into debt.”

  He finally clammed up, clearly feeling he’d given away too much and got nothing in return. I didn’t speak, this time because my mind was racing—Anderson was a gambler? Those transactions on his credit card statement, thirty grand in less than a fortnight—they must have been bets, or purchases of chips from a casino.

  “And when all this happened,” went on Zeto, “Nicky was the first person I thought of. I found it hard to believe she’d simply walked out like that.”

  “So did I,” I said.

  “I mean, she seemed so reliable. So hardworking, so … discreet.” He fastened the strap of his helmet, avoiding my eye, but I knew what he was getting at.

  “I liked her too, Reverend,” I said. “Everything you’ve told me, it’s just between you and me and DS Lovegrove. I promise.”

  He nodded, still not meeting my eye. I suppose he was trying to calculate how much my promise was worth. Then he threw his leg over the saddle of his bike and set off without another word.

  I watched his lights flash and fade into the distance and vanish. Damn, I was miles from home, soaked in sweat, and I had no idea where the nearest Tube station was, or even in which direction. I decided to go back to the one nearest the soup kitchen, and that if I ran it would warm up my clammy clothes and help me figure out what to do next.

  eight

  As I walked into my room my mobile twitched in my pocket and started to ring. I took it out and answered it without checking the caller’s ID.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Are you ever going to get a proper entryphone?” said Susan.

  There were no apologies or explanations; she didn’t even stop to ask how my day had been—she just pounced on me. My heel snagged on the rug and I went over backwards and instantly she was on me like a crazed animal, and my shirt buttons went flying, and moments later so did hers.

  * * *

  Night had fallen by the time we called a truce, but there was just enough light trickling through the curtains for me to make out her shape in the darkness. She was lying face down, hugging her pillow, and I felt rather than saw the thin sheen of perspiration on her soft smooth skin.

  “Who were you with?” I said. “When I called that time?”

  “Friends,” she said. “I do have some.”

  “Any of them your boyfriend?” I said. She snorted softly, and I
didn’t know whether she was laughing at me, or at the term “boyfriend” or at the whole idea of commitment.

  “I’m not sure that’s any of your business,” she said.

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” I said.

  “I’m on the rebound,” she said. “He was a total bastard.”

  “But not in a good way?”

  “In a married way.”

  “Ah.”

  “Does that bother you?” she said. It sounded like a trick question. Was she asking me to pass judgement, or trying to find out if I cared? I didn’t know how I felt about it, but should I admit that, or would she rather hear some reassuring lie? I felt way outclassed again; fighting was straightforward compared to this.

  “Sounds complicated,” I said finally, and thought, Whew, dodged that bullet. But the way she tensed in the dark suggested I hadn’t dodged it at all, that in fact I was bleeding profusely and just didn’t know it yet.

  “It wasn’t that complicated. I wanted him, but he wanted a mistress. To go with his car and his expense account and his place in France.” She sounded deeply bitter and I wondered how often she’d flayed herself like this. “It’s over now anyway.” She didn’t sound relieved.

  “Has it been over before?”

  She lay silent so long I wondered if she was going to get up, gather her clothes and walk out. But she finally spoke, so softly I could barely hear her.

  “A few times. I never want to go there again.”

  Then don’t, I thought. But I didn’t say it. I wasn’t in any position to tell her what to do, when it was my daft crush on Nicky that had helped get me into this mess. Both of us were lying here for pretty screwed-up reasons, but saying that out loud would only have blown the moment. When you’ve nothing to say, say nothing, my dad always told me. Everyone will suppose you’re deep and thoughtful even when really you don’t have a clue.

  “What was your day like?” Susan said. It was a clunky way to change the subject, but I could hardly blame her.

  “Interesting,” I said. I was calculating how much I could say without breaking my promise to Zeto. Even if I wasn’t sure he’d keep quiet about me, I wasn’t going to wave his dirty laundry just to impress Susan.

  “That picture in Nicky’s files, of the copper in the drink-driving case,” I said. “I’m pretty sure he’s on the take.”

  “Seriously?”

  “And I’m pretty sure Nicky knew about it.”

  “You think he might have been the one who threatened her, sent her those messages? So she’d leave the country?”

  “It’s possible, yeah.”

  “If he knew she was on to him—could he find out who you are?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. It occurred to me now I should have made Zeto make the same promise as me—that he wouldn’t tell anyone about our conversation. The only person he’d be likely to tell, of course, was Lovegrove, and a guy as desperate to keep his secrets as Zeto might decide the copper was the nearest thing he had to a friend. Lovegrove had as much at stake as he did, after all. Maybe Zeto didn’t know much about me, but then I had called Lovegrove this afternoon and asked questions, and even a traffic copper can put two and two together, given the right motivation.

  “We’ll see, I suppose,” I said.

  Susie’s hand covered mine, and her breathing slowed, and the darkness crept over both of us, and the rumble of the night buses in the streets below faded to a sound like the sea.

  It was the bitter smell that woke me up, catching at the back of my throat. Burning hair, I thought, and I opened my eyes. It was still dark, but something had changed about the texture of the darkness—it seemed to billow and shift like ghosts were hovering over my bed. And it wasn’t just a smell in the air—the air itself was rancid and sour in my mouth, and in the distance I heard a window breaking and a whump like a huge heavy blanket being flapped, and suddenly I knew what was happening. I grabbed Susan and shook her.

  “Susie. Susie—!”

  I saw the outline of her head as she raised it from the pillow. She looked around sleepily and coughed.

  “There’s a fire,” I said. “The building’s on fire—!”

  She scrambled out of bed while I fumbled for the switch of my bedside lamp still lying on the floor in bits. When it flickered into life my guts turned liquid with fear. Black smoke was billowing under the door and seeping through cracks in the floorboards, and every mouthful was like acid. I suddenly remembered the second-hand furniture store on the ground floor, a hotchpotch of old vinyl armchairs and sofas packed with polyurethane foam, materials that had been banned years ago because of the toxic fumes they gave off when they caught fire. And now all that plastic was blazing below us, and we were in a gas chamber twenty metres above ground level with a wooden floor that was already growing warm under my bare feet.

  Susan had tugged on her jeans and the nearest T-shirt she could find and was pushing her feet sockless into tight boots, swearing under her breath, and I could hear her voice tremble. I too dressed as quickly as I could, pulling on trainers, picking up a jumper and then throwing it aside when I realized it was acrylic. If—when—acrylic catches fire it melts onto your skin, and when they take it off your skin comes with it. I found a woollen jumper full of holes and smelling of old sheep, tugged it on, and turned just in time to see Susan reach for the door handle.

  “No—!”

  The handle was already hot, and she snatched her fingers away. But she tugged her sleeve down over her hand and reached for the knob again but I pulled her back from the door.

  “Don’t open that door! We’ll be dead in seconds!”

  I realized I was shouting now, that the distant roaring had grown closer, and was now punctuated by the tinkle of windows exploding outwards and falling in fragments down to the street.

  Dragging her by the hand I rushed into the bathroom, fumbled the plug into the plughole and turned the taps on full. The towels hanging off the back of the door hadn’t been washed in a few weeks, but that hardly mattered now. I grabbed them and threw them into the tub, calculating that soaked in water they would seal the door of the bathroom and keep the toxic fumes out for a while at least. But even as I pushed the towels into the water I saw the door wasn’t going to be the problem. The bathroom floor was covered in vinyl, but the air in the room was already hot and sharp and stung the eyes. I looked around and saw that smoke was seeping—no, gushing now—from around the bath. The floor directly underneath the tub, I realized, must have been bare boards, and the smoke from below was coming up through the cracks.

  I tugged my mobile from my pocket and pushed it into Susan’s hand shouting, “Call nine-nine-nine!” As she stabbed the keys, blinking back tears of pain, I dashed to the window and unscrewed the latch. I knew there was nothing out there but a twenty-metre drop to the concrete pavement below, and only Spider-Man could get out that way, but the fire brigade might have a ladder that could reach us—presuming they got in here in time. I heard Susan trying to talk into the phone, but coughing so badly she could barely speak, and that made me realize I’d been holding my breath. I tried to take air in slowly, through my nose, but my eyes immediately flooded with tears and the smoke seared my lungs. I stuck my head out of the window, but that didn’t help—flames were surging through the window frame directly below and the heat rising up was blistering the paint on the windowsill outside our bathroom.

  Susan shoved the phone back at me, screaming something, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying, and from the look of terror on her reddened, soot-smeared face I guessed what she had said hadn’t made much sense anyway. I dragged her over to the bath, grabbed a soaking towel and wiped her face with it. She stopped coughing momentarily, but now I could see she was crying with fear, and I hugged her close.

  “Here,” I shouted, grabbing the soaking hand towel, wrapping it round her face, and fumbling to tie a rough knot at the back. “It’ll help you breathe,” I tried to shout, but my mouth and throat were so scorched with fum
es I could hardly get the words out. I grabbed a wet flannel from the bathtub and clamped it over my mouth before turning to the door and touching the handle, praying it wouldn’t sear my hand. It was hot, but bearable, and I grabbed it, turned it and yanked the door open.

  My bedroom was now so full of black smoke I could hardly see across it. The sodium light from the street lamps and the flames refracted from below lit black pillars of fumes that coiled and seethed like fat snakes writhing in a pit. The room was filling with toxic gas from the ceiling downwards, and the light from my bedside lamp was fading and faltering as the lethal black smoke crept closer and closer to the floor. Susan resisted as I pulled her through the doorway, as if she wanted us to turn back and lock ourselves in the bathroom, but I knew there was no hope for us in there. I had planned to try the door to the stairs again—maybe I had been too quick earlier to assume the stairwell was on fire. But without opening the door I knew that if I’d been wrong then, I wasn’t wrong now. Smoke wasn’t just pouring under and round and over the door—it was leaching from the door itself. I could feel the heat coming off the wood in waves, and knew it would burst into flames at any moment.

  Susan was sobbing through her towel, and her nails were digging into my arm again, in terror rather than passion. I stood there, lost, my head spinning, and I turned to look around, and I cracked my head on the sloping ceiling and cursed. And suddenly I knew what I had to do.

  I dropped the wet flannel that had been over my mouth, threw off Susan’s arm and punched the plaster panelling in front of my face. It was as solid and unyielding as brick and it nearly broke my hand. I yelled in frustration, then realized I had been panicking—for Christ’s sake, think straight! I moved my aim a little to the right, and punched again, and this time felt the plasterboard flex under my fist. My first blow had hit a hidden rafter, but now I threw punch after punch, like it was my last stand, determined to go down all guns blazing, though by now my lungs were burning and my eyes streaming and the strength was fading from my arms. Through the darkness and the thick, oily smoke I felt Susan push past me and start to pull at the edges of the hole I’d knocked in the plaster, bringing down cascades of ancient filthy dust and cobwebs that fell on our faces and got into our eyes. I clenched my eyes shut and clamped my mouth tight as I scrabbled too, ripping away horsehair padding and rotten felt until my fingers felt rough wooden battens running horizontally, and beyond them cool smooth slate. I slammed my fist into the slates and felt the thin stone shatter like glass even as it split my knuckles. But one hand was out, clawing in the cold clear air above the roof.