Dead Head

by C. J. Skuse

‘Rafael,’ I said, ignoring the throb in my chest. Oh my God. He was the hottest Ninja Turtle. It had to be, didn’t it? That had to be a sign. Days before, I’d had the conversation with Jayde and Ryan about our cartoon shag-wishes, and now here he was – a living breathing Shag Wish. He waited for me to say my name but I didn’t – I was too caught up with the warmth of his hand and the fact he was named after the hot turtle.

  A shiny-cheeked young woman in an orange playsuit – Fun Times at Guantánamo – made a beeline for him, linking his arm with hers.

  ‘Shame we couldn’t have hung out,’ he said as he walked away.

  I looked up at the TV screen. ‘We’ll always have Paris,’ I smiled. I don’t know if he heard but he smiled too.

  And he left me, there alone, with nothing but the puddle of jizz to keep me company. No change there.

  It could have been the parasite in me, looking for a host, but watching him walk away without a second look, it hurt. Reality shook me wide awake. I was on my own again. And I didn’t like it one little bit.

  Anyway, another bumpy flight, a crowded shuttle bus and a taxi ride later, and I arrived as instructed at Hacienda Santuario – sweating like a pre-war Prince Andrew. The place sat at the end of Camino Aguacate, a steep dirt track nestled in the hills above the resort city of Rocas Calientes, overlooking a golden stretch of coast.

  Arturo, my cabbie, who had greeted me at the airport with a torn-off square of cardboard and a crudely-drawn flower on it, had informed me the name translated as ‘Hot Rocks’ and the deeper into the hills we went, the more accurate that became. Grey boulders littered a scorching hot desert of ferocious-looking thorn bushes. There wasn’t another house, car or person on the horizon the whole drive up from the coastal highway. Just dead dogs. I counted four on that one road.

  ‘Why all the dead dogs?’ I asked him, who spoke way better English than I did Spanish.

  He chuckled and his dimples deepened. ‘There are many stray dogs in Mexico. They escape, they fuck, they produce more dogs. It’s a problem.’

  One of the dogs I noted looked like Tink – a little brown Chihuahua with crazy-big ears and a little black nose. She even had a white patch on her big belly like Tink. I couldn’t look at her for long.

  The car came to a halt in a wide turning circle at the top of a steep climb, and when the dust settled it revealed a set of tall black gates, at the top of which it read Santuario in spidery iron script. Beyond the gates lay an unwelcome avenue of spiky plants and bushes bearing inch-long needles.

  ‘This looks inviting,’ I said, as a sicky wash of unease crashed over me.

  ‘Adios, señorita,’ Arturo laughed, speeding off down the hill. I stared through the gates. It reminded me of the sight greeting the Little Mermaid when she got to the Sea Witch’s lair in the book Dad read me at bedtime. It was always the bit where I’d pull the covers tight so the Witch couldn’t get me. There was a button on the gate post. I pressed it and there was a click.

  ‘Uh, I’m looking for Tenoch Espinoza?’ I said, my head itching like a bitch and my throat drier than the sand beneath my shoes. No answer. ‘Uh, Dannielle me envoi? Bobby Fairly? Yo soy Hilary Sharp?’

  Still no answer, despite my valiant attempt at minimal Spanish. I pressed the button again. Again, no answer. I dropped my leaden rucksack to the dirt and kicked the gate repeatedly until one of my trainers flew off.

  ‘FUCK’S SAKE!’ I glared up at the endless blue sky. My sweat had formed patches and I could smell definite crevice rancidity. This was the proverbial It: the deadest of dead ends. My ire had woken up all the thought owls; as welcome as unsolicited U2 albums and almost as impossible to get rid of: I was tired as fuck, hungry, dehydrated and boiling hot.

  ‘SOMEBODY HELP ME! IT’S NOT FAIR! IT’S NOT FUCKING FAIR!’

  But it was fair, wasn’t it? I’d more than asked for a bit of payback and here it was. I couldn’t walk all the way back down the track in a blistering hot, Mad Max-esque wilderness to the coast road – I’d surely die of thirst en route. This was it. This was the end. In a few months’ time, some backpacker would stumble across my skeletal cadaver complete with pile of fake extensions on the ground behind me. They’d find Richard E. Grunt in my backpack and my fake passport. They’d put two and two together and realise it was me. Probably release a fucking book about it and become a bestseller.

  And as I’m sitting there, panicking, losing the will to live and identifying which of the hook-beaked fuckers circling above was going to peck the flesh from my ribcage, the panel on the post behind me fizzed and clicked.

  A deep, gravelly voice barked ‘Quién está ahí?’

  I scrabbled to my feet. ‘Yeah, it’s Hilary? Hilary Sharp?’

  ‘Tu nombre real?’

  ‘Hilary Sharp? Hilary? S.H.A.R.P? Hilary Fucking SHARP?’

  There came a laugh. ‘One last chance, señorita,’ he sang. Suddenly he was speaking perfect English with a Spanish lilt. ‘What. Is. Your. Real. Name?’

  ‘My name… is Rhiannon Lewis.’

  And there came a buzz. On a deafening creak, the gates opened slowly inwards onto Spiky Plant Avenue. I grabbed my bag and shoes and raced down the track like The Little Mermaid on her brand-new legs. A white camera on one of the pillars swivelled as I entered, and once I was through the gates creaked closed behind me and met with a heavy clank.

  The stony path wound through the forest and the deeper I went, the greener the trees became. Succulent cacti, tall boojum trees with curling branches like long scribbles into the wide blue sky. Palms with wide fronds, acid green cacti with fluffy white flowers up the stems and short craggy old men trees like something out of the Upside Down. I was so thirsty.

  I came upon some wide steps leading up to a heavy wooden door. I knocked. A camera above swivelled my way. There was a scuffing sound, flip-flops on stone. Bolts sliding. The door opened and a tattooed brute with one arm in a blue sling stood before me. He was 60-odd but his hair was shockingly black, scraped into a ponytail, and his face smooth. He wore long grey shorts and in his good hand was a 10k gold dumbbell.

  ‘Rhiannon,’ he said gruffly, rolling the ‘R’.

  ‘Tenoch?’ I said.

  ‘Hola,’ he said, his face brightening. ‘Welcome to my little house.’

  ‘Thank you. I think,’ I muttered, stepping inside.

  What followed was a tour of his ‘little house’ which was more of a mansion and an exceptionally tidy one at that, albeit it hideously decorated with animal skins, brown leather and gold accessories. I followed, achingly slowly because of his limp, though I didn’t ask about his injury, nor his gimp arm or any of the myriad keloid scars littering his skin. I was still too thirsty.

  ‘No visitors,’ he said. ‘No communications – emails, calls. Everyone and everything that comes into this house does so only with my permission.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. Glancing towards the kitchen in the hope that he’d read my mind and offer me some kind of cold liquid before I deadass fainted on the pristine earthenware tiles.

  Thankfully the place was air-conditioned, and in the huge kitchen, bearing the largest oven I’d ever seen and two giant fridges, we stopped. ‘You can make your own meals,’ he said. ‘Pop Tarts, sandwiches, whatever.’

  Saliva flooded my mouth. I hadn’t had a Pop Tart in weeks. ‘Bobby said I’m not allowed to eat Pop Tarts, I love them but—’

  ‘Eat what you like here, be who you want. There’s nobody for miles.’

  He led me past the fridge full of sodas through an archway into a lofty seating area with a suite of sofas and wing-back chairs draped in cow hides.

  ‘We have Sky TV so you can watch what you want in here. We have nearly as many English channels as our own. BBC, the news, Downton Abbey. I watch it all the time. That why my English so good. You like Made in Chelsea?’

  ‘No I fucking don’t.’

  The chairs were all positioned in a C-shape around a fireplace so huge I could stand up in it and jump and I still wouldn
’t have hit my head. On the wall above hung two crossed machetes – both with serrated edges – like the one on his massive chest tattoo – one of about fifty littering his body.

  Tenoch clocked me looking. ‘They cut through bone. You – no touchy.’

  At the other end was a fully stocked bar with stools dressed to look like saddles. It stank of cigars, and the back wall was covered with antlers.

  ‘Bar area.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said, still gasping for anything wet in my mouth.

  Next to the living room and bar was a small messy office and a large TV screen on a bracket split into six black-and-white images – the feed from six exterior cameras. He showed me an app on his phone where he could view the footage at any time. He had apps for everything. Apps to close and open the blinds, apps to turn the lights on, apps to adjust temperature.

  ‘There’s a camera in all the rooms, even yours. For security, I’m not a pervert.’

  And I believed him. He had hands like Dad’s. Boxer’s hands. There was a punch bag in his home gym too – an old converted stable running along the side of the west wall. He said I could use it whenever he wasn’t.

  ‘I’m not into gyms,’ I said, folding my arms.

  ‘Use it for stress,’ he said, which pulled me up. I had used the gym a couple of times on the ship when I was stressed and it had helped me in a way I hadn’t expected. Maybe it helped Tenoch in the same way.

  ‘So do I have the run of the place?’

  Tenoch shrugged. I took that as a yes.

  There were pictures dotted all over that ranged from the mundane – family photos, a young Tenoch chewing a cigar and wearing a ten-gallon hat with one foot perched on a giant tortoise – to the bizarre – lying across a Ferrari, surrounded by topless women, pulling a giant bear along on a chain, brandishing a golden gun in one hand and a severed head in the other.

  ‘I’ll show you upstairs to your suite.’

  Ooh, things were looking up, I thought, despite my dehydration light-headedness, and as if by magic he took the hint.

  ‘Oh, my manners. I haven’t offered you a drink. What would you—’

  ‘Cold soda,’ I said without thinking. ‘Would be great. Thanks.’

  Gold was a running theme at the Hacienda. Anything that could be gold, was. Baths, the sinks, accents of gold on all his gym equipment. As we were going back downstairs, I noticed a large painting hanging on the facing wall – it was of a girl lying down in a large meadow of shimmering golden flowers. The flowers framed the girl’s face; her smile brighter than the gold.

  ‘Is that a Klimt?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I painted that. It is my daughter, Marisol.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I said, wanting to say something nice at that moment, rather than what I wanted to say which was Why aren’t her eyes in a straight line and why do her toes look like sausages? I figured I needed to keep this guy on-side. I switched on Hilary. ‘You’re so talented.’

  ‘Thank you. I used oils and gold leaf. It does not do her beauty justice but I try.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  He stared back at me. ‘She’s dead. I haven’t painted anything since.’

  I followed him out to the baking hot pool terrace – a wide-open space overlooking a manicured lawn edged with empty borders. In the centre was a large stone igloo and next to the pool an ornate shed like a large Wendy house.

  ‘It’s great here,’ I said, breathing in the sultry heat.

  ‘You are only here for two months.’

  ‘What do I do after two months?’

  ‘The agreement was for surgery, recovery time and a new passport. You’ll be gone by April. And I need your name for your passport too.’

  ‘Can’t I be Hilary Sharp again?’

  ‘No. You must break the chain from Europe in case they tracked you.’

  ‘How about Marisol? Like your daughter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Anne? Or Aña? At least it would be an echo of Rhiannon.’

  ‘No, and no tilde. A white-bread name, unlinked to your past.’

  ‘I can’t pluck a new name from thin air. I need time to think.’

  ‘Well, you need to think of it soon. In the meantime…’ He gestured towards the stone igloo. ‘This my temazcal. Get me your old passport.’

  He held out his hand and I heaved my rucksack round and fished around for it. ‘Why do you need it?’

  ‘To break the chain,’ he said, entering the stone igloo. ‘You have an iPhone too Dannielle said?’

  ‘No, I lobbed it in the Tiber.’

  ‘Good.’ Tenoch entered the temazcal. By the time I’d followed him in, a fire was alight in the central pit, lined with old ashes and charred sticks. My passport was on the pyre, bubbling.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ I said, my chest tightening at the sight of my only ticket out of Mexico bubbling and burning to a crisp.

  Tenoch sat on the stone bench, cackling as we watched the last evidence of Aussie Hilary licked to death by an orange fury. And I may have imagined it but I could have sworn there was a bone among those embers.

  ‘You can take those extensions out of your hair too. You don’t need them now.’

  I gingerly began unpicking them. My head grew lighter as they came out and I flung them into the pit on top of Hilary’s passport.

  ‘There,’ said Tenoch, as the fake hair hissed and fizzled. ‘You are not Hilary Sharp now, nor are you Rhiannon Lewis. So who do you want to be?’

  I sat opposite him on the bench watching as the flames consumed the last remains of the person I had been. ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Mr Fairly said you were organised.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ I said, catching my breath. ‘How did you know Bobby?’

  ‘I don’t. Never met the cabrón,’ he said, itching the cast beneath his arm sling. ‘We’ve done some business in the past. I trust him.’

  ‘Drug business? Coke? Heroin? I’ve seen Narcos.’

  ‘You think because I’m Mexican I’m cartel?’

  ‘No,’ I said, unconvincingly.

  ‘I used to be cartel, not anymore. Your friend Mr Fairly was a small link in our European chain. We did good business together.’

  ‘You left it behind? You saw the light?’

  The flames ignited his eyes as he stared into the angry pit. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Why did you offer me sanctuary?’

  He tapped his bad arm. ‘I need some help. You need some help.’

  ‘And money?’

  ‘Of course. And I need you to do a job for me. Come see.’

  ‘Sounds ominous,’ I said, following him back outside, scratching an itchy bump that had emerged on the skin at the back of my neck.

  ‘No, you should not find it hard. It right up your little alley.’

  I trailed behind to the Wendy House, or ‘pool house’. He opened the doors and the smell hit me. Inside, stacked up a heap in the middle of the room, were four very dead men. Riddled with bullet holes, covered in blood, swarming with flies. Thick black bodily fluid had leaked into the blue carpet.

  ‘Jesus!’ I said, yanking my sweat-sodden T-shirt hem to my mouth.

  ‘They broke into my house about a week ago.’

  ‘What, all four of them?’

  ‘They are part of a gang that I used to belong to.’

  ‘The cartel?’

  ‘I left them but they never left me. Sometimes, they make their feelings known. Don’t worry – they were all bad. I know you only kill bad men.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  He grinned – his teeth yellow, like a wolf’s. ‘I always know who I’m doing business with. I have eyes everywhere.’

  Apart from the pile of dead men staining the shag pile, it was a nice little place, the pool house. There was a sofa bed, a table with a vase of fake marigolds and a TV in the corner. Through another door was a tiny bathroom.

  ‘What do I do with them?’ I asked, with more than a hint of da fuh?
r />   ‘You know your way around a butcher’s knife,’ he said. ‘Cut them up.’

  ‘Why do I have to cut them up?’

  He turned on his heel. ‘Cut them up, burn ’em. Whatever.’

  ‘I only did that once, cut somebody up. I didn’t enjoy it.’

  ‘OK, they will need to be buried down in that field over the back fence. You need to dig a hole and take them down there. And I can’t see you being strong enough to carry them as they are. Even dead, they’re too heavy.’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘You want to stay here?’

  ‘Can I at least have a sleep and a shower?’

  ‘Oh sure,’ he said. ‘You go freshen up. I’ll fix you something to eat and then you sleep. They’ll still be here when you wake.’

  ‘Great.’ Tenoch closed the pool house doors and I followed him back towards the house. ‘Over the back fence is an empty field between the date palms and the citrus orchard. It used to be for cempasuchil but nothing grows there now. You can take them down there tomorrow in my little carretilla.’

  ‘Why does nothing grow there?’ I asked.

  He turned to me and grinned widely, showing a full row of Disney villain teeth. ‘Why do you think?’

  Sunday, 20 January – Hacienda Santuario

  DI Nnedi Géricault

  Guy Majors

  The actress on that bloody annoying hay fever advert with all the bees

  The actor on that other ad for toilet paper who can’t get over the softness of his own arse

  Justin Timberlake. I don’t know what gives him the right anymore.

  SKY NEWS: BREAKING NEWS

  ‘We go live to our Europe correspondent Guy Majors in Rome where there’s a new development on the whereabouts of serial killer Rhiannon Lewis. Guy?’

  Cut to bouffant-haired white guy in suit. Finger in ear. Eau de Gammon cologne.

  ‘Yeah, hi, Sandy, I’m here in Rome, Italy, where it’s alleged Rhiannon Lewis was seen a couple of days ago and it is thought she is still in this area. She was last seen in a café by two tourists, mother and daughter Lindsay and Kaisha Debenham, who are here on holiday for a fortnight and they join me now…’

  Cut to close-up of two blonde women – the same blondes I’d seen in the café at the Pantheon. Scouse accents. Deeper tans.