Martyn Pig (19 page)

I waited, still staring. It's your move, Dean. What are you going to do? Better make up your mind. You can't just sit there smoking cigarettes.

He fumbled in the pocket of his leather jacket, pulled out the mini-cassette and flourished it like a conjuror's rabbit.

‘What about
this
?' he said.

‘What about it?'

He paused, looking puzzled.

I smiled.

He tried again. ‘No money, no tape.'

I carried on smiling.

‘Do you understand, Pig? No money, no tape. If I don't get the money, this—' he tapped the tape, ‘this goes to the police.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘No?'

‘No.'

‘Don't think I won't.'

‘You won't.'

‘No?'

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

I stood up and crossed to the window. The road outside was thinly covered with fresh white snow, like a layer of frosting on a cake. Dean's motorbike leaned on its footrest across the street, an ugly-looking thing covered in chrome with a puke-green petrol tank that bulged out at the sides. It looked cheap and nasty, like a toy from The Bargain Bin. A toy motorbike for a toy man. I turned and looked at him. Crouched awkwardly on the settee he looked shrunken and pathetic.

‘Do you know what forensics is?' I asked him.

He frowned. ‘Forensics? It's fingerprints, blood, stuff like that. What's that got to do with anything?'

I crossed the room and stopped behind the settee, looking down at the top of his head. He swivelled round and watched, perplexed, as I reached down and plucked a long blond hair from the back of the settee. Dangling the hair from my fingers, I held it up to the light. ‘You'll be bald in a few years' time.'

‘What?'

‘Look,' I said, pointing to the back of the settee. ‘Loose hairs all over the place. It's disgusting.'

His hand moved automatically to his beloved ponytail. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Do you want to know what we did with the body?'

He shook his head, confused.

‘I'll tell you. We wrapped it in a sleeping bag, weighed it down with rocks and dropped it in a gravel pit out at the old quarry.' I paused to let that sink in, then picked another loose hair from the back of the settee and began twisting it round my finger. ‘Last time you were here you dropped hair all over the place. All over the kitchen floor. After you left I picked them all up. But I didn't throw them away. What I did, before we wrapped Dad's body in the sleeping bag, I stuck some of the hairs under his fingernails. Wound them round his fingers. Your hairs, Dean. Do you see? Do you know what I mean?'

Vacant eyes looked back at me.

I went on. ‘And a cigarette end, too. Remember? You dropped one on the kitchen floor. That went in the sleeping bag as well. Hairs and a cigarette end. Your hairs, your cigarette end. It's amazing what the police can do these days. Hairs, cigarette ends, fingerprints, DNA. Forensics, it's amazing stuff.'

Dean watched me as I moved back to the armchair and sat down, his mouth and left eyelid twitching in nervous unison.

‘Do you understand?' I said.

He shook his head slowly. ‘You're lying.'

‘No.'

He was paler than a dead fish. ‘I don't believe it.'

I shrugged.

‘Prove it.'

‘I can't.' I smiled. ‘You'll just have to trust me.'

‘What if I don't?'

‘That's up to you. It's your choice. If you want to take the chance ...'

‘Bastard.'

‘If the body's found – which it will be if anyone hears the tape, I'll make sure of that – there's enough evidence there to put you away for murder. More than enough.'

‘But the tape—'

‘Implicates me and Alex, too. I know. Think about it, though. She's a young girl, I'm a kid. We're innocents. You forced us into it, Dean, you
made
us help you. Even if we
were
convicted, which is highly unlikely, the worst we'd get is a year or two in some kind of detention centre, if that. But you, you'll go to prison, whatever happens. Real prison. Not some kids' holiday home run by social workers. Prison. Locked up, twenty-four hours a day, for the rest of your life. With
real
bad guys. Murderers, rapists, perverts ... think about it, Dean. Life. It's a long time.'

He stared at the floor, unconsciously rubbing at his eye. ‘They wouldn't believe it,' he said half-heartedly. ‘Why would I kill your old man?'

‘For the money.'

‘I didn't know anything about the money!'

‘Alex told you.'

‘She didn't!'

‘Can you prove it?'

He couldn't answer. He just sat there, deflated. Lost. There was no way out. I had him. He couldn't afford
not
to believe it.

‘The tape,' I demanded, holding out my hand.

‘I've got copies.'

I shook my head. ‘You haven't.'

‘What?'

‘Alex has got them.'

‘How? When?'

I glanced at the clock. ‘About fifteen minutes ago. You gave her a key to your flat, remember? That's where she's been while you've been here. Searching your flat, looking for copies of the tape. We knew you wouldn't bring them here.'

‘She's been in my flat?'

‘You gave her a key.'

‘Bitch! I'll kill her!' His eyes were cold and furious and I thought for a moment he was about to go for me. I braced myself, but his fury quickly faded. He was nothing. Less than nothing, now. Beaten, lost, humiliated, he sat there like a baby – a six-foot-tall baby dressed in black leather. Helpless, clueless, weak, white and flabby. A gentle breeze would have blown him over. I reached over and took the tape from his hand. Candy from a baby.

I went over and stood at the window. A trail of footprints led across the street, stark and fresh in the snow, heading towards Dean's motorbike. Or away from it, I couldn't tell. Some kid, I thought, taking a look at the bike.

The snow fell steadily. I looked up into the tumbling white sky and picked out a single snowflake. It seemed to fall much more slowly than all the other flakes, as if it didn't want to land. It wanted to fall for ever. And as I stood there watching it come down I somehow felt myself becoming part of it. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I swear it's true. There was me, Martyn Pig, standing at the window looking up at the sky; and there was another me, a star-shaped me, drifting down in the snow. I could feel the cold air breezing through my fingers. I was crystal. Strong and intricate and beautiful. I was weightless. Floating. Far above the ground. I could see for miles. I could see the grey clutter of town, the factories, the winding brown river, the distant roads and cars, the houses, roofs, the street below, a gawky-looking kid gazing up through a window ... and although I was just one of a million tiny jewels of ice, there was only me. All I had to do was fall, and that's what I was doing. Free and easy, no fear, no feeling at all, just falling gently through the afternoon air to land without a sound on the snow-covered roof of a Vauxhall Astra. And then I started to fade away. Just before the darkness descended, I looked over at the boy in the window. He looked back at me, ran his fingers through his hair and then turned away.

Dean was just sitting there, staring at the wall. ‘I thought you'd gone,' I said.

He rose and left without a word. I heard the front door open, then quietly close. I watched from the window as he crossed the street, head down, shoulders stooped, his black garb dotted white with snow. I watched as he pulled down the visor of his helmet, mounted his motorbike and wearily kicked it into life. There was no revving, this time, no angry buzzing. He just drove off cautiously, turned the corner and was gone. The shining black tyre tracks immediately began to fill with snow.

I listened to the sound of the motorbike as it picked up speed, heading down the steep hill of the main road towards the roundabout, fading into the distance. And then, quite suddenly, it was gone. One second, a faint waspish whining; the next second, nothing.

Gone.

Odd, I thought.

I shrugged. It'll be the snow, some kind of acoustic illusion.

Acoustic illusion? Is there such a thing?

It doesn't matter.

You did it.

Perfect. Plan A. Smooth as you like. No problems. All sorted. Dad gone, Dean gone. Nice and neat. I smiled.

All that's left is me and Alex. And thirty thousand pounds.

Sweet.

Ten minutes later Alex was at the door.

‘That was quick.'

She didn't answer.

‘Did you get the tapes?'

She didn't even look at me, just walked straight past into the front room and squatted down in front of the fire warming her hands. I followed. There was a glazed look in her eyes, distant, not-quite-there. Her movements were strange, too. Slow and stiff, like a sleepwalker. She started rubbing her hands together, over and over again, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. I noticed the thumb and two fingers of her right hand were smeared with something black.

‘Alex?'

She didn't seem to hear me.

Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed. Ambulance. Alex was motionless. Staring, her hands clasped tightly together, listening to the siren approach. Down the main road it came, closer, louder – a harsh wailing sound. The siren tone shifted as the ambulance passed by and then it faded. Alex murmured something under her breath and then began rubbing her hands again.

‘Alex?' I said quietly.

She didn't reply.

I reached down and touched her shoulder. ‘Alex?'

Her hands stopped rubbing and she looked up, surprised to see me.

‘Martyn.'

‘Are you all right?'

She blinked. Her eyes suddenly cleared and she stood up and kissed me with ice-cold lips. It felt a bit weird, to be honest. Like she was someone else.

‘Excuse me,' she said, and left the room.

I heard her climb the stairs and go into the bathroom. Almost immediately the taps started running and the toilet flushed. Sick again, I thought. Shock, probably. That's all it is. A bit of shock. Aftershock. Sneaking into Dean's flat, poking around inside, on her own, it must have scared her. She's frightened, that's all. Nothing to worry about.

I sat and waited, gazing out of the window at the snow. I was starting to get sick of the sight of it.

When Alex came down ten minutes later it was as if nothing had happened. She was herself again. Smiling, bright and breezy, fresh. Clean.

‘So,' she said, settling into the settee, ‘what did he say?'

‘Who?'

‘Dean, stupid. Who else? What did he say?'

‘Not much. There wasn't much he could say really.'

‘I wish I'd been here to see his face.'

I told her all about it, from the moment he arrived to the moment I watched him leave. Except for the stuff about me and her, I left that out. And the thing with the snow. She listened eagerly, perched on the edge of the settee, staring at me with her big brown eyes.

‘What did he say when you told him I was in his flat?' she asked.

‘He wasn't too pleased,' I said. ‘He called you a few choice names.'

Something flashed across her face and then, in an instant, it was gone. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, sticks and stones ...'

‘How did it go, in the flat?' I asked.

‘Easy, no problem. I just walked in, got what I wanted and left.'

‘You got the tapes?'

She reached into her bag and pulled out the mini-tape recorder and a box of cassettes. ‘I checked them all on the way back. He only made one copy. Idiot. He actually
labelled
it, look.' She held out the tape for me to see. It was labelled on the back:
A & MP, talk, copy
.

I laughed. ‘Dean, the master criminal.'

‘Mister Big,' added Alex.

‘Not so big now.'

She smiled.

It was all so easy. It was perfect. Everything had worked. I felt good inside. I'd set out to do something and I'd done it. Me. My plan. My idea. I was proud of myself.

‘Do you think we'll see him again?' I asked.

She looked away, but not before I saw that funny look cross her face once more. It was like a face beneath a mask, revealed for an instant, then gone again. Too quick to recognise.

‘No,' she said softly, ‘I don't think we'll see Dean again.'

Late afternoon. The Scrabble board was almost full. Alex was sitting with her elbows on the table, head cupped in her hands, staring at her letters. She never moved them around in the rack, just stared at them, with the tip of her tongue poking out between her lips, concentrating, waiting for a word to appear.

We'd checked through all Dean's tapes again, just to make sure, but there was nothing of interest on any of them. The original and the copy of the blackmail tape we'd burned in a metal bucket. I'd put the burnt remains along with the tape recorder and all the other tapes in a carrier bag, topped it up with kitchen refuse then nipped out and stuffed it into a wheelie bin outside someone else's house a couple of streets away.

Now, sipping tea, staring out into the afternoon darkness, I was thinking about tomorrow. The Plan. Part 2. There wasn't much to it, really. Alex would come round in the morning, we'd go into town, draw out two hundred and fifty pounds, and get spending. The only thing was ... we hadn't really talked about what we were going to spend it
on
. I felt a bit awkward about it, to be honest. I didn't want to appear too pushy, you know, too forward. But then I didn't want Alex to think I wasn't prepared to do whatever she wanted, either. If she wanted to spend the money on presents, clothes, that kind of stuff ... well, that was fine. As far as it went. But what I really wanted was to get out of here. I wasn't expecting us to just jet off somewhere immediately, but a trip to the travel agent would be a start. They might have something on short notice, a country cottage in Scotland or Wales, something like that. We could get on a train, maybe even take the car. Anywhere would do. Anywhere but here.