Ashes by Now (7 page)

I understood only too well. The thought of him and Millar getting hold of Tracey and Dawn made me go cold all over.

‘You as much as touch those two, and –'

‘Don't be silly,' he said. ‘Don't act tough with me. You've been nearly shitting your pants since I came in. I asked you if you understood.'

I nodded. What was the point of pretending. He had me exactly where he wanted me.

‘Good,' he said. ‘So we both understand each other. I like that. Well, I'll be off now. People to see, places to go. You know how it is. With any luck we'll never see each other again. Goodbye, Sharman.' He stuck out his hand for me to shake.

Christ, but that was about the last straw.

I ignored it. Brave boy, aren't I?

‘Please yourself,' he said, and turned on his heel and left.

But I'm not dead yet, I thought, as he swaggered out of the ward. And it'll be a long time before you and your mate get another go. And it can't be just a miscarriage of justice twelve years ago that you're so worried about. There's something more. A lot more. And it all has to do with a piece of paper that you have. A piece of paper that, thank God, I didn't mention, and you've probably forgotten I even know about.

You made a mistake, Collier. A mistake that one day you're going to pay for.

You didn't kill me when you had the chance.

20

Dawn and Tracey took me home in their little Renault Five. They'd been round to the flat and given it a good going-over, and filled the fridge up with goodies from the Marks and Sparks chilled cabinets.

I was still a bit weak and wobbly, but I'd get better. I had to. There was a lot to do.

I started off by explaining to them exactly what had happened the night I was beaten almost to death, and the events that had led up to it.

I thought it was the right thing to do. No, I
knew
it was the right thing to do. Terry Collier had threatened them as well as me. If they wanted to split, now was the time.

When I'd finished the story and a bottle of weak French lager, I said, ‘I don't want to put you two into any danger. These people are bad. And they're powerful. We aren't. There's lots of ways they can get to us. There's only one way to get to them. I have to find out what really happened that day in Brixton. For some reason Collier and Grisham and Millar needed a scapegoat. They had Sailor, and they done him up like a kipper. I don't know why, but I intend to find out. It's obvious that I was right all along. He didn't rape and kill that girl, but for sure someone did. I'm not going to be safe from those bastards until I find out who. And if you stick around, nor will you be. Maybe I should have told you before. Maybe not. I don't know. Maybe I was just being selfish about it. You were great to me in hospital. And coming round here, doing the cleaning, doing the shopping, I appreciate it. But now might be the time for you to leave. Collier's been keeping an eye on all of us since Sailor came out of prison. He knew about us being together, and it's damn sure he'll know if you don't see me any more. Maybe you'll be safe then. I mean the bloke's crazy. Maybe it won't make any difference. Maybe he intends to hurt anyone I'm fond of just out of spite. I know he's capable of it. That's the trouble. I don't know what he intends to do. I don't know exactly how crazy he is. But I
do
know that he and Millar were going to kill me that night, and I was lucky to get out of that car when I did.

‘And if he does hurt you, I'll never forgive myself. It's bad enough that Sailor topped himself. If I'd listened when he came out of jail, perhaps he wouldn't have. If I'd've listened all those years ago in Brixton nick, it's for sure he wouldn't have. I've got to live with that. What I couldn't live with is if either of you got hurt. So I think that it would be better all round if you just left now, and forgot that I ever existed.'

Dawn, who was sitting on the sofa next to Tracey, went and got me another beer. I was in bed. Like I said, I was still a bit weak.

When she returned and sat next to me on the edge of the bed she said, ‘You're sure they were going to kill you?'

‘Damn sure. They were going to take me up the marshes and bury me.'

‘Dirty sluices,' exploded Tracey. ‘If I ever get my hands on them –'

‘Don't even think about it,' I interrupted.

‘Who do you think did kill that girl – Carol Harvey, was it?' said Dawn.

‘I don't know, but I think that Collier and Millar do, and maybe Grisham too, the other officer involved. It was for sure that something weird went down the night they beat the confession out of Grant.'

‘But they never told you.'

‘I'd only just arrived on the strength. They didn't know if they could trust me.'

‘So what are you going to do?' Dawn asked.

‘Get a portfolio together. Find out where all the main characters are now, and what they're doing. Write out the story, or at least the parts I know of it, and try and make some sense of it. There's so few people I can speak to, see. I don't really know, Dawn, to tell you the truth. But I'm supposed to be a detective. Maybe I can detect what really happened. Find out what this piece of paper is. If it's anything at all, and not just a figment of my imagination. I was pretty bad when I heard them talking. Maybe I heard them wrong.'

‘Can we help?'

‘Sure. Course you can. I'm not going to be too mobile for a bit. But if you do, we've got to be careful. If Collier and his mob find out what I'm up to, the shit will really hit the fan. And I don't mean maybe.'

Dawn looked at Tracey. ‘What do you reckon, Trace?'

Tracey shrugged. ‘I couldn't care less,' she said. ‘It might be a bit of a laugh.'

‘It might not and all,' I interrupted. ‘It's serious this. Deadly serious. You two are vulnerable, what with the way you earn. They could bust you in a minute.'

‘Fuck 'em,' said Dawn. ‘I think you're getting us confused with people who give a shit.'

It was exactly what I'd wanted her to say.

21

So that was that. Enough said, and we didn't mention it again that night.

‘Want a joint?' asked Dawn.

‘I don't mind,' I said.

‘Want another beer?' asked Tracey.

I nodded. ‘Are you two working tonight?'

Dawn shook her head as she took a ready-rolled joint out of her handbag. ‘No. Tracey's got a date. I thought I'd stay and keep you company. Is that all right?'

‘Course it is.'

Tracey went to the kitchen for my beer, came back, and when she handed it to me, kissed me on the cheek. ‘I'd better be off,' she said. ‘Can't keep my gentleman waiting. Now you two be good and don't do anything I wouldn't.' And she collected her jacket and left.

‘Do you want something to eat?' asked Dawn.

‘I'm OK. Maybe later.'

‘There's plenty in.'

‘Good home cooking, eh?'

She smiled. ‘As good as Marks can do.'

She lit the joint, took a hit and passed it to me. I popped the tab on the can that Tracey had given me. It was freezing cold, and I had to catch the froth quickly in my mouth.

She was a lot smarter than she let on, was Dawn. A couple of times she'd started to talk to me about her life, and it wasn't like her talking at all. Not like the scrubber she pretended to be, and let the world see. Each time she'd done it, she seemed to realise what she was saying and stopped. As if she was embarrassed.

That night she didn't stop.

‘You're all right, Nick, do you know that?' she said.

‘Am I?'

‘Yeah. You're like us. Bent.'

‘Am I?' I asked again. ‘You reckon?'

‘Not like that, stupid,' she said. ‘Not gay.
Bent
. Not straight. Know what I mean?'

‘Yes.'

‘You couldn't be straight if you tried. I bet deep down inside you always knew that, didn't you?'

I shrugged. She wanted to talk, so I just let her.

‘But you did try. You must have. How could you have been a copper, and married an uptight cow like that Laura, or whatever her name was, otherwise?'

She knew exactly what her name was.

‘Mind, your daughter was sweet. She
is
like you. I could tell. Poor baby. You just hope she doesn't end up like you. No, you couldn't be straight. You're like us. Me and Trace. You don't give a fuck. Not on the outside anyway. Nobody knows what goes on inside though, do they, Nick?'

I shook my head.

‘Did she leave you?' she asked.

‘Who?'

‘Your wife.'

I nodded.

‘Why?' She shook her blonde mop. ‘Sorry, I shouldn't ask things like that. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.'

‘It doesn't matter,' I said. ‘It's history now. Ancient history.'

Dawn didn't say anything, and I knew she wanted me to tell her.

‘It's the old, old story, darlin',' I said. ‘I was screwing other women. Lots of other women. Taking a shitload of drugs. I was never at home. You know the sort of thing. But worst of all I didn't love her enough.'

‘No man
ever
loves a woman enough,' Dawn said.

‘That's a pretty profound statement.'

‘True though.'

‘You might be right. I'm the wrong person to ask. Laura said I had an emotional death wish.'

‘And did you? Do you?'

‘Maybe I did. I can't remember. Maybe I still do. I don't know.'

‘No wonder you're so fucked up,' she said.

‘Who, me?'

‘Yes, you. Totally screwed.'

I shrugged. ‘Maybe I am, babe,' I said. ‘But what can I do about it? It's what I am. What you see is what you get, and that's a fact.'

I lit a cigarette and leaned back on the pillow and drank some more beer.

‘And that's the thing I like most about you,' said Dawn. ‘See. Most people think what me and Trace do is sick. Loving each other. How can love be sick? But you don't care. I've seen you looking at the people you've met with us: TVs, TSs, other dykes, gay blokes, the Skin Two mob. A lot of people get upset by them. You, you just carry on like it's perfectly natural. You couldn't give a fuck.'

‘Why should I?' I said. ‘They don't interfere with me. I don't interfere with them. Whatever turns you on. Ain't that right?'

‘Sure. But not everybody sees it like that. Do you know what I think, Nick?'

‘What?' I said.

‘I don't think you're really alive until you've died a bit. And the first time I ever saw you, in that club that afternoon, sitting all alone, not saying nothing, just watching and listening, I knew that you'd died a bit. You have, haven't you?'

I nodded again.

‘Some people don't,' she went on. ‘Nothing ever happens to them. They live all their lives without anything really bad happening. Then they die. But I don't call that living at all. Then there's others. The ones I feel really sorry for. They do everything right all their lives. Work, get married, have kids, get a mortgage. And then suddenly one day they die a bit. You see them on TV. On the news. Their kid's been snatched, or someone close has been murdered. You can see it in their faces. They're going bent on nationwide TV. And you just know they're never going to be able to handle it.

‘But people like us, we're different. We
can
handle it. It's like we belong to a club. We've always been different. Always been bent. We're survivors. Like we've had thousands of little cuts all our lives, until one cut goes so deep and hurts so much that no one is ever going to be able to cut you that deep again. The scar's so hard that nothing can get through.'

In a way she was right.

‘What was yours?' I asked.

‘My husband and my baby… You never knew I was married, did you, Nick?'

I shook my head.

‘I was only a kid. Seventeen. Still at school. And I was clever too. I was taking A levels, and I could have gone to university. But I had to have a boyfriend. I had to know what it was all about. Be grown up. And then I fell for the baby. So we got married. I couldn't have had an abortion. I would never have forgiven myself. My baby was born on my eighteenth birthday. She'd be twelve now. That's about the same age as your daughter, isn't it?'

I nodded for a third time.

‘Kim, we called her. That was his idea. And he really loved her. He wasn't really all that bright. But that didn't matter. He'd've done anything for that baby. And for me. But differently, if you know what I mean. He worshipped Kim from the day she was born. He was a real dad. And he wasn't much more than a kid himself. He changed her nappies. Bathed her. Fed her. Took her out in the pram. He loved it. And he was such a man. I really loved him too. I'd never as much as looked at another bloke since the day I met him.

‘He was in the building game. And did he work. He'd do anything. And we were happy then. I'll never forget that. Being happy. It's been such a long time since I was. Really happy, I mean.

‘Yeah, we were content, Nick. We had each other, and Kim, and a little money coming in regularly. And the old house at the back of East Street that we'd bought cheap, and he did up till it was like a palace.

‘He started out on his own after a bit. Bought a van. Then one Friday it happened. I was working part time in the launderette down the road from where we lived, and he had a big job on, and his mum said she'd take Kim. His mum and dad had moved down towards Kent by then, and we were still in Walworth. But what with the motorway being built, it hardly took any time to get down there. So he set off really early to drop Kim off. He'd fitted one of those baby seats for her in the van. A real good job he did too. It was anchored to the floor of the van with great big bolts. Afterwards the police said it was the only part of the van that was still where it started out.'

She was crying by then, but I didn't comfort her. She didn't want comfort, I could tell. Just to remember and to talk about it to someone. So I let her get on with it.

‘They said he was going down the motorway at about fifty in the slow lane. They had witnesses. But even if they hadn't, I know he'd never go fast, not with Kim on board. Then all of a sudden one of those banks of fog you read about came down, out of nowhere. One minute the sun was shining and you could see for miles. The next you couldn't see the end of the bonnet. People were driving into that fog at a hundred miles an hour or more.'

She shook her head at the futility of it.

‘A thirty-ton truck hit him up the backside. Pushed him into another truck that had stopped dead in the fog. Him and Kim were both killed outright. Crushed. They wouldn't let me see the bodies, said it would be too much. I wanted to, but they wouldn't let me.

‘It wouldn't have mattered though. How bad they were. Because the day they died, I died. I was just twenty when it happened. And they were all there to help me. His mates. They were queuing up to help me. Help themselves more like. And do you know I was in bed with one of them the night after they were both killed? I was so alone and lonely that I let one of them have me. He brought round a bottle of Scotch and a load of grass. I'd never smoked a joint before that night, believe it or not. It made me so horny it hurt. My little family hadn't been dead for two days and I was fucking my husband's best mate. Lovely, eh?'

She was crying harder, and her eyes were bruised from rubbing the tears away. But still I left her alone.

‘I ended up in bed with most of them in the end,' she went on. ‘It was just for a bit of comfort really. A bit of company at night. But with that lot, you couldn't have company without the other. Know what I mean? But none of them were like him. Not even close. He was a real athlete. In bed and out of it. He was a lovely boy. Some of his mates got a bit heavy too. See, they thought I was weak and vulnerable. A soft touch. But I wasn't. By then the scar was too deep. I went case with them because I wanted to. They didn't like it being my choice and not theirs. And what was worse was that, after a bit, they knew they couldn't hurt me. Not inside. Not where it matters. I didn't give a shit for any of them really. I didn't care if they went back with their wives or out with some other sort. I didn't give a monkey's. So I s'pose they thought that if they couldn't hurt me emotionally, they could hurt me physically.

‘One in particular. I made the mistake of moving in with him. I'd sold the house long ago, and pissed most of the money away. I didn't care, see. I was dead, so what did it matter? Anyway, I moved in with this bloke. Eddie Spinetti his name was. I called him Eddie Spaghetti. He didn't like that. But I didn't care. He used to beat the shit out of me. He was a bad bastard, Nick, and I took it for nearly a year. Then I went to a woman's shelter in Balham. I couldn't handle it any more. Just left all my stuff and fucked off. That was where I met Liz. She used to help out at the place. A real bull dyke. At first she scared me more than Eddie did. But she was kind. She sort of took me under her wing. I told her all about Eddie. Then he found out where I was, and came round one afternoon. He busted the front door of the place down and came looking for me in my room. That was in the old days when the pubs used to shut at three. Remember?'

How could I forget?

‘I remember,' I said.

‘Liz had been out for a drink with a couple of her mates. All three of them bulls, and built like brick shithouses. They arrived at the shelter just as Eddie was kicking down my room door. They picked him up and took him out the back and gave him some of his own medicine. Then they dumped him outside Balham tube. Christ, they didn't mess around. He ended up worse than you did. He lost a kidney. In hospital for four months, he was. And they went in and visited him. Told him that if he ever bothered me again they'd repeat the performance. And go round his local boozer and tell all his mates that it was women put him in hospital. He couldn't have handled that. He'd been telling everyone he was set on by a gang of skinheads. So I never saw him again. After that I ended up as Liz's
femme
. It was all right too. She didn't have a cock, see. Nothing to prove. And do you know what? I never missed it at all. And she didn't have to beat me up to show me that she loved me.'

‘What happened to her?' I asked.

‘She was doing a bit of dealing – no, a lot. Old Bill was on her tail. She fucked off to Amsterdam to live. She wanted me to go with her, but I couldn't. My baby and my husband are buried here. I couldn't leave them; I have to walk on the same ground they're part of. Otherwise I don't know what I'd do. Then I met Trace. And I fell for her. Who wouldn't? The soft cow. She's the same as us.'

‘Why?'

‘She was abused as a kid by her dad. She's mostly over it now. But she still don't trust men.'

‘Who can blame her?' I asked.

‘You're right. But we trust you, love. I've talked to her about it. We could get it together, you and me. You're the first man I've fucked because I want to, since Eddie. The others have been strictly business. I'd like another baby, see. Another chance. I think you only get one go at life. One turn. And then it's over. And so far, my go's been pretty well messed up. Mind you, I wouldn't leave Trace. I still love her. I can't change that. But we could all live together. Or close. I'd never do nothing with her unless you were there. And I wouldn't mind you screwing her if you both wanted it. As long as I was there too. I wouldn't want you two going off together, though.'

‘You're as good as gold, Dawn,' I said. ‘Better than gold in fact.'

‘I wonder how many birds you've said that to, Nick. Lots, I'll bet. But they ain't here are they? And I am. So what happened to you, Nick? What killed you inside, before your time?'

I thought about it for a minute before I answered. How everything and everybody I'd ever cared about I'd walked away from, or had been violently snatched out of my grasp.