The City Trap (12 page)

Kropotkin’s Diner had a media resource centre above it. A place that hired out visual equipment and offered darkroom time for rent. It was a long shot, not much to go on, but Des felt that
porno photos could be involved in Claudette’s death. Or not. Des figured that maybe the bum shot could be the work of a freelancer, probably not professional but maybe wanting to be, the sort
of person who might use the resource centre. Des had just had a chat with the co-ordinator and some of his views had been confirmed. A tentative approach, the guy had said, cheapish paper, but
maybe knowing what they’re doing. He’d also given out a few names of dubious types who might be up to peep-show work. So Des was almost pleased. A dead-end it might be, but for a while
the momentum was being maintained. It needed to be. Thought had to be forestalled. Thinking would only lead on to Bertha and the hold she seemed to be getting on him. Strung up by money and sex.
Caught on the rebound from Miranda. Bertha, she with the dangerous past. Des grinned uneasily at the dosser who was licking the last drops of tea from his spoon.

‘The way it goes,’ he soothed to himself, ‘no strings and one-off.’ It hardly sounded convincing.

12

‘I didn’t put the damn thing there!’

‘Oh yes you bloody well did!

‘No way!’

‘You’ve got your head where your arse is sometimes, Liam!’

‘Just don’t blame me, woman!’

‘Look at the poor kid. He’s covered in it!’

‘Shit, that’s the doorbell now.’

Des groaned, took his hand off the buzzer and looked up at a cloudy sky. Maybe he should go back to taxi-driving? But then again, you still had to deal with people.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it then?’

‘Probably that friggin loan shark.’

A child began bawling inside the house and then, perhaps in retaliation, Des heard the television being turned up. Footsteps clomped towards the door.

‘Jesus, can’t you all shut up – and turn that telly down!’

The door to the house was flung open and Des found himself looking at a skinny, dishevelled guy somewhere in his thirties. The man picked at his nose and gave Des a quizzical look.

‘So who the fuck might you be then?’ he asked.

‘God almighty,’ Des said with a smile. He put his hand in his pocket and brought out half a bottle of Paddy’s booze.

‘Well . . . to be sure, God is always welcome here.’ Liam Bell beckoned Des to come in. ‘We’re right good Catholics, you can tell by the horde of sprogs we
got.’

The living room was like some kind of aftermath, a nuclear war or earthquake perhaps. The floor cluttered with toys and paper. Several chairs upturned, as were cups on a table where a large
black puddle spread and dripped onto the floor. A number of kids were sprawled there too and on the rest of the furniture. Another one sat directly in front of the TV. In the middle of this, a
woman stooped, trying to dab off some black substance from a small, bawling child. The whole scene gave Des a headache. Liam shrugged his bony shoulders and pursed his lips.

‘Grand, ain’t it?’

‘I need to talk to you, about photography.’

‘Ah, well . . .’ Liam looked around at the mess. ‘We’ll go upstairs.’

Stumble up more like, thought Des as he followed Liam out of the mayhem and up a stairway piled with old newspapers, teddy bears and the odd box. They ended up in the main bedroom. Des slumped
down onto a double bed and unscrewed the bottle of whiskey while Liam propped up the cot which butted against an overflowing wardrobe.

‘Sort of pushed for space I’d say.’ Des passed over the whiskey.

‘Bloody council haven’t come up with anything else yet.’

‘So d’you do commissions then?’

‘Depends what you’ve got in mind.’

It seemed as good a way in as any. Des told him he was a private investigator who needed some special kind of snaps for a client of his. The usual scenario. Husband cheating on wife, the wife
reluctant to believe it and needing a juicy eye-opener to make it come true.

‘You want porno peeping-tom shots?’

‘You’ve got it. You’ve done it before, haven’t you?’

Des pulled out the triangular piece of bum and waved it in the air. He got the whiskey back and Liam took the photo.

‘This is not mine. It’s a bit out of focus.’

‘A reject shot, but you do this stuff, don’t you?’

‘The fuck I don’t. Well, I’ve done some stuff with the wife like, but this isn’t my scene.’

‘No?’

‘No, man. I mean, I’m interested . . . like you know, photography, it’s an art form you can create with, make your own images. Tits and bums, that’s just exploitational
crap. Hold on a min –’

Liam handed back the photo, then knelt down and began to rummage under the bed. He eventually brought out a battered folder and slipped out a few black and white 10 x 8s.

‘Like this is the stuff I’m into at the mo, low-light night shots.’

A fuzzy street-lamp shone in the top left-hand corner in one photo, all grain and blotted white with moth shapes. Below the light, pale girders loomed out of a dark background. Then Des saw a
brick wall split dramatically in two by a thrusting shadow that pointed to a tattered boyband poster, their clean smirking faces made almost lunatic by the play of light. Then another shot,
low-contrast grey light making barely discernible ripples on the surface of a canal. Dead-end night glimpses, images of insomnia.

‘See what you mean.’

‘I’m trying to explore the edge of things, man, you know, like where light begins to disappear and the photo is just a stop away from being no more.’

‘Sounds profound, like photographing death or something.’

‘Yeh. Yeh, I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘With what I’m working on, it’s not such a crazy idea.’ Des passed over the whiskey again. ‘So, if you don’t do any hanky-panky stuff, you know someone who
does, or have you heard of someone doing it?’

‘Yeh . . .’

Liam was looking at his own photos, beginning to get lost in them.

‘I mean, yeh, some time back,’ he said. ‘You meet like-minds down the resource centre and I was chatting to this bird one time and she mentioned she’d been asked to do
dodgy stuff.’

‘Now this is what I’m looking for, Liam.’

‘Mary Holmes, a New Age sort of hippie-type. She lives on Ivor Road.’

Des left Liam squinting at his dark, sparse images thinking that maybe they were a kind of retreat for a harassed man. But he was also thinking of someone else whose eyes were like a shutter
witnessing her last blink of light.

* * *

Mary Holmes had just got home from her part-time job at Kelly’s bookshop. It was always a good time. Just after lunch with the house quiet and no more responsibilities for the
day. She could easily spend an hour lounging on the sofa, maybe reading the paper, daydreaming or thinking about the things she had to do. She was considering her options then – a nice long
bath, go up and see Jerry and spend an hour or so in bed, or perhaps a good session in the darkroom. She knew she needed to do the latter most. The burglary had almost knocked her back to square
one. She had hardly anything left of her portfolio and had only just got the equipment functioning again. But it all felt a bit too much like work and she was still feeling uncomfortable with the
violation of the burglary. She began to feel that she should leave that until later, much later, at a time when she’d felt she’d pleasured herself well. Mary stretched and moaned
sensuously. There was no argument – a spliff, a bath and a large dollop of sex.

Downstairs, at the back of the house, someone was using a window as a mirror. He ran his hand over a frowning brow and then pushed his fingers into ochre hair, enjoying the
thickness of it and the curls that rippled back over his head. Scobie was very proud of his hair. A lion’s mane, virile and strong. He gave it one more tousle and began to move further round
the house to the fire escape. It looked solid enough, though the rail seemed frail. Scobie noticed the open door on the first floor. This was the kind of job he enjoyed. A simple case of putting
the shits up someone. And a woman at that, a blundering amateur who posed no threat. Scobie put on a casual smile and quickly made his way up the steps. He didn’t hesitate at the kitchen
door, strolled on through and pulled out a sharp knife as he did so. Mary seemed to find it hard to believe he was there. Scobie smiled, bowed his head a little and then walked over and cut the
phone line. Mary only really registered his presence at that point and became paralysed with fear. But she had no time to react. Scobie came round the sofa and put the knife to her throat.

‘So, darling, a bit surprised to see me, eh?’

‘Wh-Who are you? What –?’

‘I ain’t here to answer questions, dear, only to ask them.’

‘God . . . you can, you can take whatever there is, b-but there’s not much, I’ve already been done.’

‘Mmmm . . .’

Scobie suddenly lost his line of thought. He’d noticed Mary’s supine body and a familiar feeling was beginning to surface. It wasn’t supposed to. He had very strict orders from
Ross. But he’d done something bad last time, really bad, and secretly knew that he’d enjoyed it too much. Scobie struggled to concentrate.

‘I know all about you being done cos it was me what done it. We found the negs, darling, but we didn’t find no prints.’

‘What n-negs?’

Mary found herself utterly frozen. She seemed to have no sensations in her body other than a vague feeling that she needed a pee. She felt as if she was just a brain, a whirring, buzzing brain
with all its circuitry in panic.

‘Come on, you’re well out of your depth. You don’t know where I’m bleedin coming from?’ Scobie widened his smile. ‘But the fuck I’ll tell you, darling,
that I come from something bleedin bigger than you could imagine and we’re dead unhappy with you. Straight answers, OK, darling, straight and clear or it’s a shitty bin bag and a
landfill site for you.’

‘I don’t . . .’ Mary still couldn’t think straight.

Things happened very quickly then. Scobie grabbed Mary’s hair, moved round the sofa and began to wrench her up. Mary yelled in agony as she struggled to support her weight. The grinning
face moved in close. ‘Where’re the bleedin prints?’

A fist suddenly thumped into Mary’s face. There was a cracking sound and blood began to pour from her nose. She fell back onto the sofa, her ears ringing loudly, and she was conscious of
the words deep down that she knew she had to bring up and out. As she fell back, Mary’s skirt had swept up across her body and Scobie was suddenly looking at underwear. His next punch
stalled, he found himself ogling and getting that feeling back again. Shit, he thought, what’s the rush, why turn it down, what’s Ross gonna know? He crouched and put his hands on bare
knees. ‘Well, darling?’ he said.

Mary saw the change in his manner. She was shaking uncontrollably now and trying to keep the blood out of her mouth. Scobie’s hand began to paw upwards, like a butcher’s on a joint
of meat.

‘I don’t have any prints,’ Mary finally managed to blurt out. ‘I gave them all to Claudette and that’s the honest truth!’

‘Did you now?’

Maybe it was the way he said the words, like he had stopped listening; or maybe it was those awful hands on her trembling flesh; but something snapped in Mary. With a shriek, she kicked Scobie
in the chest and sent him tumbling backwards. Then she jumped up and ran, ran to the kitchen and stumbled through. She ran to the fire escape, hit the rail hard and then, Mary was suddenly flying,
flying and falling like a swooping swift under blue sky . . .

* * *

Des should’ve been there, following leads, making progress; he could’ve arrived before Scobie; but Des actually ended up asleep in his car. It was the compensatory
tipple of whiskey that did it –
for having endured a mind-numbing bout of family life
. The experience had brought back uneasy recollections. His own family years, splattered here and
there with spurts of love and hate. One tipple led to another. One experience got generalized. All the houses in the street around him, all the streets multiplied – families sprawling for
miles and miles, all cosy and self-contained, browsing drowsily and awesomely quiet. The thought comforted Des. He felt that at least he was out on the street, living in cracks and fissures where
people were exposed and nothing was predictable.

One tipple leads to another. The bottle then becomes a teat, a breast of comfort for one alone in an empty street where all windows point inwards. Families . . . Des thought of Bertha, her
enticing bosom and experienced hands. And maybe why not? It was some sort of nestling place in the fissured world where the fate of hearts is a mere lottery. And then Des drifted down to dreams,
crazy game-show dreams with ‘real love’ prizes. Des was a contestant, shabby and exposed, watched the world over by families, fast-food grazing, bored and forever unsatisfied.

13

Ivor Road on a sunny late afternoon. Kids out playing cricket in between the long lines of parked cars. Des drove exceedingly slowly, wary of darting youths and a fierce sun
that splintered through over-arching trees. Sweat dribbled down his jaw and his mouth felt like fur. As he cautiously progressed, Des peered through the street clutter to check out house numbers.
He needn’t have bothered. The one he wanted was the one with the cop cars outside. Des parked and then let the sun warm his closed eyes. For a moment he could’ve been out on the coast
resting from the optic sparkle of the waves. But it was only the briefest of moments where dusty plane trees had turned to tamarisk. Very soon his head was thumping. He knew he would have to open
his eyes and confront more pain. As he got out of the car, the word ‘Miranda’ suddenly sounded in his mind and Des felt a surging hunger for flight.

There was quite a crowd outside Mary Holmes’s house. Intrigued, excited, sad. Brown faces mostly, warmed by the sun and maybe the knowledge that it had not happened to them. Des eased his
way through. There were a couple of cops by the gate; one had a scar that spliced his nose. Des hesitated but then caught sight of Errol emerging from the rear of the house. A confident smirk began
to form. Des slipped under the barrier and smirked even harder at the cop who wore his nose with pride.