To Die For (15 page)

‘Where’s the girl?’

‘Her name’s Kid. I told you that.’

‘Yeah. Where is she?’

Browne shook his head, sighed heavily.

‘She’s terribly malnourished, you know. I’ve fed her up a bit, given her some vitamin shots. I need to examine her, but she won’t let me. I need to see if she’s been abused. She doesn’t seem to be injured in any way internally, but...’ He ran a weary hand over his grey hair. ‘Christ, I don’t know what I’m doing. She should be in care, in a hospital, not stuck with a drunk and a thug.’

‘I need her here.’

He swung round.

‘I don’t give a damn what you need. It’s the girl, man. That’s who I’m thinking of.’ His fury went as quickly as it had come and he seemed limp, as if he’d spat his strength at me. ‘If I thought for one second she’d be better off with the authorities, I’d call them and be damned to you. Aye, and me. But she’s gone through enough and I don’t want to put her through any more. Not yet, anyway. And, amazingly, she seems to want to be with you.’

I thought he was probably in the middle of a hangover.

‘I have to ask her some questions.’

‘Can’t you let her be?’ he said in a tired voice.

‘It’s important.’

‘For a while. Just let her be. She’s a bloody child, man. I don’t know what she’s been through, but I know trauma when I see it. If you push me on this, I’ll call the police. I should have done that last night.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

He slouched over to the sideboard and pulled out a half-bottle of Scotch. He filled a glass and drank it. I decided I could talk to the girl later. I didn’t want Browne drunk and angry, he might go and do something stupid.

‘Do you know what they did to her?’ Browne said.

‘Huh?’

Browne smiled. It was what they call a wry smile. I didn’t think he was amused at all.

‘Do you care about anyone, Joe? Just asking out of curiosity. Call it academic.’

He got like that when he drank. He swallowed the rest of the Scotch.

‘Ever had a woman, Joe? Someone you were glad to see? I had someone once. Not my wife. Someone else. Long time ago now. Long time.’

When I thought Browne was finished, I said, ‘I need to use your phone.’

But he didn’t hear me. He was away in the past, torturing himself a little more with the failure of it all. He stared off into the distance for a moment and then he turned his gaze to me with a look of concentration on his face.

‘Yeah. You did, didn’t you?’

‘What?’

‘That woman.’

‘What woman?’

‘Name ’scapes me. Black woman. Barbara. Lovely lady.’

One time, Brenda asked me what I did.

‘What do you mean?’

We were at her flat. We were on the sofa, watching a war film on TV. I’d only been seeing her a few days then. I kept thinking she’d tell me it was nice and all but I wasn’t really her type.

She’d had a few drinks. I’d had a couple of beers and was feeling tired. My head hurt.

‘I mean, what do you really do?’

She was curled up, her head resting on my shoulder.

‘You know what I do.’

‘Not at the casino. I mean, what else do you do?’

I turned to her now.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Just curious. I mean, I don’t care what it is. I just want to know about you.’

I turned back to the film.

‘I do a bit of strong-arm stuff.’

‘You’re muscle, huh? A button man? You work with gangsters? The mob?’

For a moment, I thought that she must be an idiot. People didn’t really believe that shit, did they? But when I looked at her, there was a twinkle in her eyes and the corners of her mouth were turned up slightly and I realized she was taking the piss out of me. I didn’t seem to mind.

‘Because I’m big,’ I said, ‘some people use me to do some strong-arm stuff, repoing cars, collecting debts, like a bailiff – you heard of a bailiff, right? Well, a lot of that stuff is taking from people who don’t want to give it up. You need to have backup so they don’t get any funny ideas. That’s all I am, backup, insurance.’

It was probably the most I’d ever said to her in one go. I knew, as I was saying it, that I was going out of my way to pretend to be legit. People who talk too much are often lying. I was talking way too much. Besides, she was a pro, why would I care about telling her what I really did? I didn’t know why I would, but I suppose I did.

‘I bet people always get scared when they see you. I bet they pay up fast.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah, I’ll bet.’

She sat for a moment, thinking.

‘I remember when I was a girl – I was ten, I think – and my parents took me on holiday. We went to a place in Devon called Sidmouth. Ever heard of it?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s a nice place. There’s lots of these winding country lanes with hedges so high you couldn’t see more than a hundred yards of road at a time. We rented a cottage for the week. It was so quiet, Joe. Well, you could hear crickets and birds chirping and all that kind of thing, you know, summer sounds. But there was no traffic noise, no shouting, no loud music. No... people.’

She was quiet for a long time. She seemed to have forgotten what she was going to say.

‘It was nice,’ she said again. ‘Anyway, I remember this one time, I went out to buy a toffee apple. I’d never had one before and they sold them in this shop and so I went out to get one. I went in and there was this old lady behind the counter and she was looking at me and I smiled at her and started looking around. I thought she looked like a nice old lady, you know. Like you see on TV or something. Like in a book. I mean, she worked in a sweet shop in a small town in Devon. You could’ve taken it right out one of them old films. I thought she’d smile and tell me I could have the toffee apple for free. And for a moment, I felt happy. And then she came up to me and said, ‘Don’t try and steal anything.’

I saw her wipe a tear away. She was drunk. But I was listening.

‘What I’m trying to say is, I go in a place sometimes and I can see what they’re thinking. Only, it used to be something like “there’s a little nigger, we’d better keep an eye on her” and now it’s “there’s a nigger tart, we don’t want her here”. What I’m trying say is, I know what it’s like. To be unwanted. To be looked down on. To be ignored or suspected or whatever. And it hurts, doesn’t it? I mean, it always hurts. You can’t ever get used to it.’

In the film, British troops were killing Nazis in the name of liberty and country and all the other stuff they tell you is right and just. I said, ‘Some of the best people I ever worked with were black.’

Brenda smiled.

‘Some of my best friends are black.’

‘Huh?’

‘Never mind. Go on.’

‘Some of the best people I ever worked with and some of the worst people I ever knew were black.’

She thought about this for a moment.

‘So, what you’re saying is, of all the black people you’ve known, some have been great criminals and some have been right bastards. Is that it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, that’s nice to know, Joe.’

‘It’s just how it is. Same with the whites.’

She moved her head over to my chest like she was listening to my heartbeat. Maybe she was checking to see that I was alive.

‘I’ll sleep with you if you want,’ she said. ‘For free, I mean.’

I said, ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.’

I meant it.

Afterwards, lying in bed, she turned over on her side, facing me. ‘You were lying,’ she said. ‘I know you were.’

She must have seen something in my eyes because she sat up, holding her hands up in mock surrender.

‘Don’t shoot,’ she said, trying to smile.

‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Lying.’

She lowered her hands. She gave up trying to smile. ‘Do you need a gun to repossess cars?’ she said.

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you need a trunk full of them? Shotguns too?’ I clenched my jaw. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I weren’t spying on you. I just happened to be out back, in the car park one time. That’s where I go sometimes – well, that doesn’t matter. I saw a fella pull up in a car and you went out to talk to him and he opened up the boot of his car and started showing you these guns.’

I relaxed my jaw. There was a dullness in my head and I felt like I was awake but sleeping. I closed my eyes and the thoughts washed away. I felt like this sometimes, like all the pain was going and my head was floating off somewhere. Sometimes, when it was like that, I had trouble remembering things, I had trouble working things out.

Brenda moved in the bed. When I looked at her, she fidgeted a bit. She looked uncomfortable. A breeze pushed at the curtains and caught some of the cigarette ash in the ashtray on the bedside table and scattered it. The breeze was cool. I looked up at the ceiling. I found myself saying, ‘I do armed robberies.’

She didn’t say anything right away. I wasn’t sure what reaction I’d expected. She might have jumped up and run screaming from the building. But I didn’t think so. After a while, she said, ‘Banks, you mean?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘Who do you work with?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘All I want to know is, do you work for Frank Marriot? Or Kenny Paget?’

‘All I want to know is, why do you want to know?’

She shivered and climbed out of bed and shut the window. She got back into the bed, sitting up, her back against the wall. She grabbed a cigarette from the table next to her and lit it. The smoke plumed and spread slowly in a cloud. We both watched it.

‘They use children, you know,’ she said. ‘They have some connections and these kids, these small children, get brought in from somewhere abroad and end up in their hands. They don’t make films with them, though. Too easy to get caught that way. They give them to men to use.’ She blew some smoke out violently. She brought her knees up to her breasts and hugged them. She wouldn’t look at me. ‘Tell me you don’t work with them. Or with anyone like them.’

‘I rob banks.’

‘I mean it. You have to tell me honest. Lie to me about anything else, but tell me the truth about this. If you’ve got any connections with them, tell me. Please.’

‘I don’t work with Marriot,’ I said. ‘I never will. And if Paget speaks to me again, I’ll probably rip his head off.’

She nodded and smiled a slight smile. I saw tears come down her cheek. She brushed them away quickly. She still wouldn’t look at me. What she said next surprised me. What she said was, ‘Are you going to kill me?’

I put one hand on her cheek and turned her face towards me.

‘Why would I do that?’

‘People do, you know. Especially people with guns.’

‘I’m not that sort of people.’

‘I’m glad,’ she said quietly. She pushed herself close to me.

Sometimes, after that, she would hold her hands up and say, ‘Please don’t kill me.’

She would smile her smile, the one that lit up her face, and her eyes would be bright like they were sparkling, like there was always something she was eager about. She looked so young when she did that, like a small kid. If she’d paid any attention, she might have seen that my eyes were dull and tired. Maybe she never looked properly. Maybe, through her eyes, everything seemed bright, no matter how dull it really was. Sometimes, when she did that, when she held her hands up, I would make a gun of my fingers and point it at her.

One time I was in the casino, sitting around, watching the punters spread their dosh about, losing more in a minute than I made in a month. I’d finished for the night and was at the bar, drinking a beer, trying to figure what the fuck I was doing with my life, that sort of thing. I saw my boss, a man called Yates, talking to some short bloke. They were pretty pally, laughing now and then. Yates was a grumpy bastard, spent his time giving his staff grief and complaining about his rotten life. He only ever smiled when he talked with a well-heeled punter. Now he was chatting to this bloke and falling over himself to be friendly. I wouldn’t have paid them any attention except that every now and then they’d look my way and that made me itchy. I went to the bar. They came over.

‘Joe,’ Yates said, ‘this is Frank Marriot.’

Marriot held out a hand and I took it, wondering what his game was. I’d been seeing Brenda then for a few weeks and I didn’t make a secret about what I thought of Marriot and his pit bull, Paget. I figured he’d come to get me fired. I was about ready to tear his face off.

I’d heard of Marriot before then, of course, and what he did and who he did it to. There were a lot of people who thought he deserved to die and I wasn’t about to argue with them. But he was connected way up and brought in a lot of money and spread it around. He was supposed to have some high-placed people in his pocket, one way or another.

I let go of his hand. He smiled. Yates had breezed off somewhere.

‘I thought we might have a chat,’ Marriot said.

He got on to a bar stool. Matheson came over sharpish.

‘What can I get you, Mr Marriot?’ Matheson said.

‘Rum and Coke. Joe?’

I shook my head. I would’ve got up and walked out there and then, but I wanted to see what the pitch was. It was something, I knew that much.

Marriot waited until Matheson had put down the rum and Coke.

‘Anything else you want, Mr Marriot?’ Matheson said, ignoring me.

‘That’s fine,’ Marriot said.

Matheson went back to the other end of the bar where he could ogle one of the busty waitresses who was up that end collecting drinks for an order.

We sat for a while, Marriot and me, admiring the scenery. He was a drab man, like his business. His suit was drab and cheap, his smile was empty, and as drab and cheap as everything else about him. He looked like an accountant. A fucking drab accountant. He wore glasses and had a habit of taking them off and wiping the lenses on his tie. He did that now. He must’ve thought it made him look smart or businesslike or something.

He took a sip of his drink and placed it on the bar and turned to survey the casino. There were a couple of his girls around, trying to pick up some mugs. When he turned back, he said, ‘Kenny told me he bumped into you the other day.’