End of the World Blues (36 page)

What he owed Neku, what he owed Mary, what he owed himself.

“Here,” said the café owner, slapping down a poster. “Take a look. He won’t know,” she added, talking to someone behind her. “He just got back from Japan.” The picture showed a young black girl.
Missing
was written across the top.

“Shit,” said Kit.

The West Indian woman frowned.

“You know her?” demanded the police officer.

Kit shook his head. He could feel their stares all the way from his table to the pavement.

Shut for renovation,
the sign proclaimed.
Open soon!

Three locks, a peep hole, and a camera above the door secured the entrance to Bar Poland. Kit wondered why, if the club was closed, the neon girl still swung in circles, and decided it really didn’t matter. There were bigger questions to answer, like how to retrieve Neku and talk his way out of there alive.

He’d been given three hours. After that it was out of the Brigadier’s hands and Neku took her chances with an extraction team. Kit didn’t believe the bit about it being out of the Brigadier’s hands, though it had been repeated several times.

Having knocked, Kit counted to ten and began to walk away. The door to Bar Poland opened before he’d taken five paces.

“Oi,” said a voice. “You Mr. Flyte?” A teenage boy with cropped skull, checked shirt, and tight jeans stood sneering in the doorway.

“What do you think?” said Kit.

“You got Mr. de Valois’s stuff?”

“All sixty kilos of it,” said Kit. “Vacuum packed, grade A…”

The boy scowled, then glanced round in case Kit’s comment had been overheard, which it undoubtedly was, and taped as well, not to mention filmed from between the slats of blind covering a window high on a wall behind his visitor.

“Better let me in,” said Kit.

The young man stepped aside, slowly.

As Kit walked into Bar Poland, he heard the door shut behind him and the click of one lock after another. As a final touch, a steel bolt was slammed into place.

“Scared of burglars?”

The boy hit Kit hard, from behind.

Red carpet, with a worn strip down the middle where endless feet had headed towards velvet curtains beyond. On the far side of the curtains was a sound system, turned way up. Kit knew this because its bass line was loud enough to shake the floor next to his ear.

“Up you come.” Hands dragged Kit to his feet. It was the boy, only now his sneer had become a smirk. He was rubbing his fist, although it was probably unnecessary, as the shot-weighted leather glove he wore looked designed to offer protection. “We’ve got your girlfriend dancing,” said the boy. “She’s pretty good.”

“You’ve got…”

“Hey,” he said. “Be grateful. For Mr. de Valois that’s mild. It could have been so much worse.”

Could it?
“I’ll bear that in mind,” Kit said.

Matters of great concern should be treated lightly. Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.
So said the book Mr. Oniji gave Kit in the hospital. It said other things as well, but the most important of these he had worked out for himself.
Regard yourself as dead already.

An old Killers track blared from hidden speakers. It was before Neku’s time and quite possibly before de Valois’s too, unless his youthfulness was just a trick of the light and a good surgeon.

“Ah, Ben…so you came.” Mr. de Valois smiled, his eyes visible behind lightly tinted shades.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” said Kit, reaching behind him.

“Kenka shinaide!”

“What?” demanded de Valois, then added, “Keep dancing.”

Neku did as she was told.

So did Kit, who stopped reaching for his gun and wheeled his case across to Mr. de Valois instead. “It’s all here,” Kit said.

“I certainly hope so.”

No way will I look at her,
Kit told himself, then glanced anyway. Seeing a half-naked child draped in the glare of a cheap spotlight that lit every scowl on her face.

“Search him,” demanded de Valois.

The crop-haired man found the Colt the first time, only finding the ankle gun when de Valois told him to search properly.

“Anything else?”

Kit shook his head.

“You sure?”

He nodded. “I’m positive.”

“Good,” said de Valois. “So you won’t mind when Alfie breaks her arms if we find something, will you?” He raised his eyebrows at Kit, who shrugged.

De Valois laughed.

“Check the cases,” he told Alfie.

Sixty individual bags of heroin. More oblivion than Kit could imagine. Each one heat sealed along its edges and then wrapped again, in polyethylene so thick it looked like oiled paper.

“Well?”

“It’s all there,” said Alfie, in a South London accent obvious enough to remind Kit of black and white films he hadn’t even seen.

“Call Robbie down,” Armand ordered. “Tell him to test it.”

A few minutes later a dreadlocked Rasta ambled from the shadows, holstering a gun as he came. His hair was thinning and had turned to grey. His red shirt had sweat marks under the arms. He looked almost as unhappy with life as Kit felt. So Kit guessed he was the man who’d been shitting in a bag.

“Ah,” said Armand. “My friend…”

Producing a scalpel from his pocket, the Rasta chose a package from the middle and slit it open, carrying a little of the powder to his tongue. “Well,” he said. “It’s the real thing.”

Without needing to be told, Robbie slit open another five bags and carried them to a table near the stage. A small gas cooker, a glass beaker, and a handful of bottles appeared, along with a small pair of scales. Although, in the event, the only pieces of equipment Robbie used were a laptop, a glass of water, and a small white box with a glass lid.

“Residual alkaloids, some methaqualone, also traces of diazepam,” said Robbie, amending it to, “Afghani, sixty-five percent pure,” when Mr. de Valois looked irritated. “Also, sugars for bulk.”

“It’s been cut,” Kit said, “ready for market.” This was what he’d been told to say. “And I’m really sorry about the misunderstanding. I obviously had no idea…”

“That I was still alive?”

Kit nodded.

In the background Razorlight replaced Kaiser Chiefs and were replaced in turn by a dance track with a single looped vocal and an idiotically simple synth line. Golden oldies, what the patrons would expect; and behind Robbie’s table, apparently forgotten, Neku circling her pole in time to the music.

She’d lost weight again. Kit could see ribs beneath her skin and watch the muscles in her shoulders slide across each other as they propelled her round and round the same tight circle of misery.

“Pretty,” said de Valois. “Isn’t she?”

“She’s Kathryn O’Mally’s granddaughter. You know who that is?”

It was obvious he didn’t, and equally obvious that Robbie did. So Kit suggested the Rasta tell Mr. de Valois, who listened in silence to a bullet-point breakdown of Kate O’Mally’s life, while Alfie looked increasingly impressed in the background.

“This woman. She knows you’re here?”

“Of course,” said Kit.

Mr. de Valois shrugged. “Not my problem.”

Kit caught the exact moment Alfie looked at Robbie; crop-haired thug and grizzled Rasta, whatever passed between them, it passed in silence.

“All the same,” said de Valois, gesturing towards Neku. “The kid’s good. Where did she dance before this?”

“Dance…?”

“She has the moves, even has a couple that are new. I was just wondering where she’s been.”

“Tokyo.”

“Ahh,” said de Valois. “That would certainly help explain her lack of English.” He glanced at Neku, his gaze sliding over her naked breasts and tiny G-string. “I think it would be good if you asked her to join me for a drink.”

Perhaps Kit was wrong to treat this as an invitation, because Mr. de Valois’s smile froze at his counter-suggestion that perhaps Neku and he should think about getting home, now that Mr. de Valois had his consignment and Kit had made his apologies.

“Not yet,” said de Valois. “You see, we still need to agree on a price.”

“There is no price,” Kit said. “The consignment is yours. All I’m doing is returning it.”

Armand de Valois’s laugh was loud enough to make Neku flinch. “Not a price for me,” he said, with a grin. “For you, for causing me problems in the first place.” He nodded towards Neku. “Also her, if you want her back I will require a transfer fee.”

“She’s Kate O’Mally’s granddaughter.”

De Valois looked irritated. “Other people would kill you,” he said. “I am being generous, very generous. In future you will work for me. As will she. But first, we have business.”

When the music stopped it left Neku frozen in mid swing. “Tell her to come here,” de Valois said, looking at the girl.

Instead of climbing from the stage, Neku vanished through a door at the back and when she reappeared it was wearing a tatty silk dressing gown that reached her ankles and was tied tightly around her waist. Sweat dripped from her face and a pulse beat steadily in her neck. Kit could smell her from five paces away.

“I need a shower,” she told him.

“Later,” said Kit, keeping to Japanese.

“What did she say?”

“That she needs a shower.”

Mr. de Valois grunted. “There’ll be time for that later,” he said. “Tell the girl I have a job for her. A very suitable job.”

So Kit did.

Neku’s eyes were arctic, devoid of light and so cold they made Kit shiver. It would have been better if a sneer or scowl gave anger to her face, but instead she smiled, almost blandly. “Tell him I’m always willing to help.”

Things moved swiftly after that.

From somewhere a chopping board was produced, along with a stained Sabatier knife and a chrome bucket full of ice. Armand demanded rubber bands and when these failed to appear announced that string would have to do.

“You ever seen this done before?”

She had, Kit realised, having translated Armand de Valois’s question. Which was more than could be said for Kit, unless one counted films. Because he’d just worked out what was about to happen.

Kit only knew a gun had been pulled when he felt its muzzle touch the side of his ear, a cold kiss just behind the hair line. Alfie’s hand was shaking. A poor start for someone holding an automatic so cheap it lacked a safety catch.

“Taking my drugs, trying to trick me, and not showing sufficient respect. Three transgressions,” said de Valois, handing Neku the knife. “That means you cut three times, one joint after another.”

He smiled while he waited for Kit to translate.

“My finger,” said Kit, meaning,
My finger, not that man’s throat.

Neku weighed the blade in her hand.

“Just do it,” Kit said. “And we’ll get ourselves out of here.”

She knew exactly where to make the first cut. Placing Kit’s left hand face down on the board and positioning her knife above the first joint of his little finger, Neku slammed her palm across the back of the blade.

Fuck.

The severed tip of a finger was rolling across the board before Kit even registered the pain, but by then Neku had his hand back on the board and her blade against the same finger, one joint lower.

A slam of her hand and two segments of finger rested beside each other.

“Take the last joint,” said Neku, “and I’ll have nothing to tie off.” Barely bothering to wait for Kit to translate, she held Kit’s hand to the board and repositioned her knife.

“She’s good,” said de Valois.

“The best,” Neku said, in fractured English.

Armand de Valois laughed. “Okay,” he said. “Tell her to have this one on me.”

Cutting a length of string, Neku bound the last section of finger and tied it off in a quick knot. “One section you can re-attach,” she whispered, “two is much more difficult.”

She was supporting him. Her single hand beneath Kit’s elbow to brace his entire weight, should he need time to compose himself.

“We’re done here,” Kit said.

“Almost,” promised de Valois. “But first, Ben…your finger, it hurts?”

Of course it fucking hurts.

“A little.”

What was he meant to say?
A lot, hardly at all…
it was, Kit suspected, a question to which there were only wrong answers.

“Luckily,” said de Valois, “I have just the cure. Sixty-five percent pure and freshly delivered. Here we go—” wiping the Sabatier on a beer mat, de Valois dipped the blade’s tip into an open bag of heroin.

“Lighter,” he demanded.

Robbie held a flame beneath the blade, until the metal tinged orange and dreams began to spiral from the oily mess.

“Come on, Ben,” said de Valois. “Let’s make friends.”

A million dreams twisted towards a nicotine-stained ceiling. A hundred thousand nightmares and every shade of longing in between. All Kit had to do was lean forward and inhale the smoke.

He made his decision without even realising there was a decision to make.

Twisting the hot blade from Robbie’s fingers, Kit moved before anyone had time to react. A sizzling slash to the throat, a smoky drag across both eyes, and Kit was almost done, his final strike hissing its way under de Valois’s chin and through his soft palate, braising his tongue.

A thing done with moderation may be judged insufficient.

A cold click told Kit that the slide had been pulled back on Alfie’s gun.
So this is the way the world ends,
he thought.
With a Chechen gangster blinded and a bullet through my head.

When one thinks one has gone too far…One has probably gone far enough.

“Let it go,” ordered Robbie.

Alfie hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation, Robbie leaned forward and tapped the heel of his palm under the knife, driving the blade clean through the roof of de Valois’s mouth and into his brain.

“Arsehole,” he said.

While Neku finished washing in the staff bathroom behind the stage, Kit ran through her parentage again, simplifying it, just to make things really clear. The more Kit iterated his points, the more convincing they sounded.