Dust and Desire (11 page)

Liptrott had been
slaughtered
, yet there were no signs of a struggle. I think I myself might have put up a bit of a fight rather than just stretch out on the bed and let it happen. That meant he must have known his murderer. Either that or Cullen, or whoever, was in the flat before Liptrott got home. I explored that avenue a little further and – as insane as it sounded because presumably the killer wouldn’t have known how long he would have to wait there, maybe hours – it tugged on my handle more than anything else. He possessed Grasshopper’s stealth; could walk on rice-paper without tearing it, but that didn’t tally with the clumsy approach of my guy in St John’s Way. So what did that mean? An off day, or two men involved?

The other option, that Liptrott already knew him, surely couldn’t work. Why would Liptrott pretend to me that he was acting as go-between for Kara, if Kara and he both knew that Phythian wasn’t a MisPer? Unless I myself was the point of the whole thing, and they needed Liptrott to be offed because he might become my way in to their world. Liptrott couldn’t have realised that I was in that kind of danger. He was a crim, okay, but he wasn’t hardcore. Violence was to him what a steak pudding is to a vegan’s shopping list.

If Kara and Cullen were from Liverpool, then it might make sense that they were in it simply to get me, although I couldn’t think of anybody who had held any grudges against me from my days as a trainee copper or, before that, as taxi driver shuttling clients along the East Lancs Road and the M62. Not grudges sufficient that they’d wanted me dead, at least.

I decided it was time to go and check out my flat. A couple of days had passed since the burglary, and if anybody had been sitting outside in a surveillance car they’d have an arse like two pieces of frozen ham by now, as well as a severe dislike of coffee. Back on my road, I dawdled by the awning of the wine bar on the corner and gave the street the once over. A skip was sitting on the roadway, its tarpaulin cover failing to conceal a riot of broken office furniture, lumps of plaster and an enamel bath. The cars parked along the street were dark and apparently empty, but no, there was a scarred little Golf opposite my door, with a large shadow in the driving seat. I hung back a little and rubbed my mouth. A couple of days’ beard growth rasped like indecision made audible. Then I remembered, with some surprise, that I had a killing machine down the front of my jeans. As well as a gun. I palmed the Glock and edged down the blind side of the row of cars. The driver was kind of hunched over on his side, his head resting on the window. Maybe he was asleep.

I opened the passenger door, got in and pushed the barrel of the gun into his ’nads. I said, ‘What’s your fucking door policy on that, fat boy?’

The bouncer sat up quick and straight, like a classroom pupil hoping to be picked to wipe the blackboard. His eyes were as wet and large as would be the wound in his groin if he didn’t start talking. I said as much.

‘Knocker sent me,’ he said. ‘He wanted me to beat some info out of you.’

‘Why?’

‘Liptrott’s dead.’

‘I know that.’

‘Knocker wants to know if you had anything to do with it.’

I shook my head. ‘Do I look like a killer? I mean, do I? Christ, everybody wants to know if I had something to do with it.’

The bouncer was looking at the gun nestling deep in his pods. ‘I didn’t know you had a gun,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I hate guns. So if you’re nice to me, I’ll put it away.’

‘I’m just doing my job.’

‘No,’ I said again. ‘Errol, isn’t it? Your job is to punch the spines out of people who try to get into Lava Java wearing trainers. Your job is to lift weights all day until you look like you put your jacket on but forgot to take the coat hanger out. Your job–’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ he said, relaxing now that he knew I wasn’t the hard case I was making out. ‘Shoot me. You’ll be doing me a favour.’

Just then I saw a shadow fall across the oriel window set into the top-floor landing where my flat is. There was a wink of light, a cigarette maybe, and then it was all back to normal.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked Errol, withdrawing the Glock from his sack and pushing it back into my waistband.

‘Off and on, about twenty-four hours. With piles.’

‘I’ll send them a Get Well card if you do me a favour.’

‘Why should I do anything for you, other than stave your face in?’

I licked my lips. I could feel my mouth going dry, the way it always goes when violence is only minutes away.

‘Somebody wants me dead,’ I said. ‘And I think the person who wants me dead is in that building, waiting for me to come back.’

‘That sounds suspiciously like your problem,’ Errol said, getting cockier by the second.

‘Yeah, well, I think he killed Liptrott, too. And if we get him, then that’s a new puffa jacket and steel toecaps for Doorman Number One, don’t you think? See it as a career move. And anyway, I’ve got a piece. How bad could it go?’

He thought about it, his face taking on the intensity of a mathematical theorist grizzling over a four-pencil problem. ‘We nail him,’ he replied, ‘I take him.’

‘I get to talk to him first,’ I said.

‘Deal,’ said the bouncer, the dumb, trusting A-wipe.

We got out of the car and hurried over to the front door. I said, ‘Go upstairs and knock on my door in five minutes. If he gives you any grief, tell him you’re a bailiff coming to secure chattels or something. Just stand in the doorway. You’ll know what to do as soon as I open it.’

He looked at his watch as I nipped over to the communal door of the next terraced house, which formed part of the same block of flats. I rang every doorbell in turn, and a couple of seconds later a woman answered.

‘Cockroach man,’ I said.

‘Not for me,’ she said.

I said, ‘They will be. They’re coming up through the basement, big as mice.’

She buzzed me in. I ran up the stairs two at a time and thanked God the layout was exactly the same as my own gaff, only mirrored. I unbolted the attic hatch at the top landing and lumbered my way up through there, wishing I had a torch instead of a gun. I resolved to start smoking immediately, if only because it would mean I’d have matches in my pocket all the time. I shuffled to my right in the gloom, trying not to make any noise to alert the flats directly beneath me. My neighbours wouldn’t have heard me anyway; they were arguing with each other over an unpaid phone bill that contained ‘
abaht firty facking pahndswuff of facking chat lines, you cant!
’ The hole that the burglar had kicked in, in order to get down into my flat, was faintly visible just up ahead. Empty storage boxes barred my way, but it was a relief to find that was all there was, and that there was no dividing attic wall.

I hung over the lip of the hole and the mess inside my flat gradually emerged from the darkness. I swung a leg over and dropped to the floor as quietly as I could, which wasn’t very. Then I tiptoed grittily over to the door where it slouched on its hinges and peeked out through the crack between it and the jamb. Errol was coming up the stairs, and I could see the shadow of the guy on the landing jittering around as if he was made of candle flames. Then Errol’s head rose into view and the other guy was jabbering questions at him, warning him, but in an uncertain way, as you do when about seventeen stones of meat joins you in a confined space.

Errol now blocked out all the light. I saw the edge of his coat, and a drawn look on his face, which was probably not wholly the result of climbing three flights of stairs. He knocked three times on the door.

I heard the nervy guy: ‘It’s padlocked from the outside. The
outside
. Fuck’s sake, what are you? Dense or something?’

I teased the muzzle of the gun through the gap and against the padlock. I squeezed the trigger. The lock spun off and hit Errol in the hand. He spun away with a grunt and tottered backwards on his heels, as I swung the door open. The guy was shrieking and he kept ducking in and out of view, keeping Errol between me and him while he wrestled to pull something from his pocket. He looked as comfortable as a hedgehog born with ingrowing prickles. Sweat lashed off him and turned his bad haircut into something intolerable. His tiny eyes flashed unhealthily like the gleam you see on blobs of tar. On his throat was a black tattoo: a cobra’s head, all fanned out ready to strike.

I kicked Errol in the chest to hurry him up and he went over on to his back, cracking the balustrade with one foot and putting a dent into the plaster of the wall with the other. He piled into the little wanker, who folded over on top of him. He continued scrabbling in his pocket, even when I pressed the hot mouth of the gun against his cheek. My hands were shaking and the sweat was dripping off my face.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded, my voice trembling, but emerging harsh as hell. I didn’t know which way this was going to go. Errol was trying to get up; he was moaning about his hand and the fact that I had kicked him down the stairs. All the while, I kept my eye on the little wanker’s pocket, and repeated the question, my voice sounding a little more unhinged. I could barely hear myself above the throb of blood in my head. I was now roaring in every possible way. Doors were opening, and then rapidly closing again.

Under the probing muzzle of the gun, I could see how his skin was in poor condition. It wrinkled away from the metal, but didn’t snap back with the kind of elasticity you’d expect from someone who appeared to be in his late twenties. It also seemed his teeth were doing all they could to say cheerio to his gums: there were a lot of black joins in his mouth. I reckoned, if I pulled back his sleeve, there would be a lot of black marks up his arms too.

He pulled out a long-bladed knife. And that seemed fine. I expected that from a low-life grunt like this. He brandished it and, yes, that was what people with knives often did. I wasn’t so happy about his apparent disregard for my gun, however, and I was even more appalled when he drew the knife across his own throat, painting the walls, Errol and myself in what seemed like an endless hot tide of his own blood.

9

Y
ou ever try going for a nice, chatty pizza when that kind of shit has gone down?

Give me credit, I had a go. But first I spent a lovely part of the evening down at Marylebone Police Station, giving statements and being mercilessly grilled. They were at least nice enough to get me a fresh change of clothes so I could walk the streets of London without resembling a vampire with a drinking problem. All I could think about – as the burly BO magnets at the nick were leaning over me and playing bad cop, badder cop – was how controlled, how graceful the little wanker’s suicide cut had been, when prior to that he had been moving like the jags on an oscilloscope.

When they finally let me go I phoned Melanie to tell her I’d be a little late, but she was okay about it, told me she was reading a medical journal over a G&T at the restaurant. She asked me if I was all right, and I said sure, even though I knew the tightness in my voice must be giving me away. I liked that she was waiting for me, trusted that I was going to show up, but a part of me wished that she had thrown a strop and gone home, vowing never to grant me a second of her non-professional time again. Things were going very bad, very fast and I was scared that I was bringing too much naughty into her life. I was glad of Mawker’s new tail, who was even more cack-handed than the previous one, so I went out of my way to make sure he didn’t let me give him the slip on the way back to W9.

* * *

At the restaurant I immediately told Melanie what had happened, and that I couldn’t stay at her place any more if I was to feel secure in the knowledge that she would be safe. She was a little shell-shocked by my news, which I had expected, but I wasn’t expecting her to say that it was all right, she’d be all right, it was okay for me to stay.

‘I can’t… I won’t have what happened at my flat happening at your place,’ I said.

‘How can it?’ she said. ‘It’s Maida Vale. Where newspapers are ironed and underwear changed twice a day. People go out for weekend breakfasts in a
suit
.’

I told her I had to leave London anyway for a few days, that it would be for the best if I took a little heat away from her front door. Until everything was sorted out.

‘By that you mean until you’re dead?’

‘Anything but that would mean sorted out, in my book,’ I said.

‘But it’s a possibility.’

‘It was damned near a fact earlier today,’ I said, knocking back half a glass of chilled Chardonnay and wishing I’d ordered something stronger.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked. The question was intoned neutrally, but there was the slightest tilting of her eyebrows. Our relationship had shifted. There was a degree of concern trying to melt away the ice at her edges, and it touched me. Except I wish it had happened at any other point but now. I’d never been brilliant when it came to…

‘Where will you stay in Liverpool?’

…timing.

‘That part of the world, the north-west, it’s my old stamping ground,’ I said. ‘I’ve got plenty of contacts up there I can depend on.’

‘Old girlfriends, you mean?’

‘Not necessarily. There are some, but they’d sooner fry my arse off with a bit of garlic than give me a sofa for the night.’

‘Popular with the ladies, were you?’

‘Notorious, more like,’ I said, and tried to divert the evening in other directions because faces were trying to push through. There’d be time enough for memories once I stepped off the train, but not now. Not with this woman.

We finished our drinks and pushed our empty plates away. I paid the bill, and felt guilty when I wished that she’d offered to deal with it. I needed to get hold of some cash from somewhere soon – my stash at Keepsies wasn’t going to last for ever – or I was going to find myself visited by some real hard men, bailiffs bigger than Errol, with sledgehammer fists and back-brain sensitivities.

It was unseasonably mild as we walked the pleasant streets back to her flat. At the corner to her road, I stopped her and said goodbye.