To Kill For (22 page)

‘What do you want with her?' I said.

‘Who? Your bird?' He shrugged. ‘We work for the same man. Why shouldn't I say hello?'

It seemed like the whole pub had gone quiet apart from the music, which played in a kind of mocking way.

The two men next to us were moving away now. The barman, still unsure if this was all a bad joke, brought my drinks over. Paget fished for some money in his pocket and held out a tenner. I held out a tenner of my own. The barman looked from one bill to the other. His face showed fear, and he kept glancing around. Finally, seeing the look on my face, and maybe deciding I was too big to fuck with, he took my money, gave me change and went off to find help.

I took a few gulps of the beer.

‘You look like a nice couple, Joe. Like beauty and the beast.'

I knew that whatever I did to Paget, Marriot could revisit on Brenda. Paget knew that too. He knew people's weaknesses. Brenda, I suppose, was mine. Maybe my only one. But something was going on, and I wanted to know what it was. I felt stupid, unable to outmanoeuvre him. I didn't play games, and he was very good at them.

I said, ‘I want to know what you want with her.'

He laughed.

‘You're starting to repeat yourself. Brain mushy? That it? All them blows on the head making you stupid?'

I downed the rest of the pint. I didn't care if he thought I was punchy. Lots of people did. It didn't matter. What bothered me was that he could say it to my face, and get away with it. The more he spoke, the more dumb I felt. I was hamstrung by Brenda, and he knew it, and he was enjoying himself.

‘She tell you what she's been up to?' he said. ‘Huh? She's a star. Did you know that? Didn't she tell you what—'

I saw it out of the corner of my eye; a flash of light, a crack, shattering, crunching. His head jerked forward, his glass flew across the bar and smashed into the bottles on the other side. He staggered and tried to stand and fell back on his seat. Blood poured from the back of his head, seeped into his hair and spilled down his neck.

I spun round. Brenda stood there, broken glass in her hand. Her face was vicious. People stared, horror in their eyes. I turned and saw the young barman speaking into the phone. I looked at Brenda, and she was looking at Paget, staring at him as he tried to stand. She staggered back a step. She gripped the broken glass, blood poured from her hand. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her. The crowd parted and we barged through, Brenda like a rag doll now, limp and loose.

We hit the street and I hailed a cab and we fell in. I told the driver to take us to Tottenham. It was the first time I'd taken Brenda to my flat. She was shaking.

‘What was it about?' I said.

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘What was it about?'

‘Please, Joe. Please.'

‘You knew, didn't you?'

‘Knew what?'

‘You knew he'd be there.'

‘Did I?'

‘Don't fuck about, Brenda. He won't forget this.'

‘You scared of him then? You? Scared of what he'll do to you?'

‘He won't do anything to me. He'll do it to you.'

‘It doesn't matter about me,' she said.

She put a hand on my cheek. The tears fell.

‘And anyway,' she said, ‘you'd do something, Joe, wouldn't you? To protect me?'

‘Do what? For you? What's going on?'

But then she wiped the tears away and half smiled and I knew she wouldn't tell me anything. It was another of her secrets.

‘Don't worry,' she said.

I left it. I told myself it didn't matter.

Then we were in the market, and I felt something pulling at my mind; a weight, dragging it down somewhere.

I held Brenda's face. It came apart in my hands.

I woke sweating, shaking, my heart pounding. I didn't know where I was and the fear of not knowing pushed into my stomach. I couldn't breathe. I gasped for air. Brenda was going to die, I thought. Brenda was in danger. I looked around me, trying to work it out; where I was, when I was, why I was.

The dead face of the TV glared at me, glowing grey in the dark room, and I remembered and with that memory came the knowledge that it was all too late. Brenda was dead. I fell back in the chair, breathing deeply, feeling the lightness in my head fade. Gradually I came back.

And I remembered the dream. Only it wasn't a dream at all, but real, a memory. It was fucked up in my head and confused, sure, but it was a memory anyway.

Then I knew what the weight had been. I knew what my mind had been trying to tell me. It was about Brenda, and her secrets.

I saw Browne, asleep in his chair, his head forward, his chin on his chest. He was snoring slowly. I heard a car go by outside, its tyres zipping in the wet. I tasted the stale cigarette smoke and remembered Compton and Hayward and Bradley. There was a fug in the room and the lingering smell of sweat and cheap aftershave and Scotch. It was like the inside of a Saturday night.

I got up and went into the kitchen. I splashed cold water on my face and ran it through my hair. I found a bottle of Browne's throat-burning Scotch and swigged from it.

I went back to the lounge, took my Makarov from the coffee table and left.

The block of flats was still there. The lift was still broken. I climbed the stairs, stopping now and then to catch my breath. I passed a group of teenagers on one of the levels. They watched me go by in silence. One of them said something and the others laughed. This was their world and they were watching it crawl past, spitting at it as it went. I felt a million years old. I felt like I was always slowly climbing towards my own death; tabbing towards dug-in Argentinean troops, stepping into the ring with pain already pounding in my head, doing another blag for another vicious bastard, always heading towards another destruction.

‘Poor old Joe,' she used to say to me. ‘Poor old Joe, heading for the breaker's yard.'

But this time it wasn't my own doom I was trudging towards. It was hers. Maybe that's what had made me stop on the stairs.

The door to the flat had been painted since I'd last been here. It was blood red now, the paint thick and uneven. I banged on it and waited. I didn't know what time it was. Somewhere in the middle of the night. I banged again. A light came on. I banged again. An old man's voice said, ‘Yes? Who is it?'

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a bunch of twenties. I pushed them through the letter box and waited. The door opened a crack, pulling the chain tight. Old eyes looked up at me.

‘What do you want?'

‘I want to come in.'

‘You can't.'

He pushed a thin hand through the gap and dropped my money onto the floor. The door slammed shut.

I took some more money from my pocket and pushed it through the letterbox. This time I heard a younger man talking to the old man. Their voices were low, but urgent. I heard the old man say they didn't know who I was. I heard the younger man say he didn't care, it was free money. I banged again. The talking stopped. The door opened a crack and a man in his forties looked out at me.

‘Why do you want to come in?' he said. ‘Who are you?'

‘I used to know someone who lived here,' I said.

I pulled more money from my pocket and held it up. He looked at the money. I could see his eyes counting it.

‘So why do you want to come in?'

‘I won't nick anything. I won't hurt you.'

‘I want to know.'

‘No, you don't.'

I held out some more money. He thought about it for about a second.

‘What about that?' he said, nodding to the cash on the floor.

‘Keep it.'

He closed the door and I heard the chain slide. I heard the old man say something, his voice scared. The young man told him to shut up. The door opened and I walked in.

The smell had gone. That was what I noticed first. Her smell. Without it, the place was cold, just another flat in another tower block. They'd done something with it, painted it, put up pictures, but it didn't matter. There was nothing there for me. I suppose I'd been expecting some reminder of her. I felt empty. Emptier.

The old man had backed away from me and was standing close to the curtained window, watching me. He was in his pyjamas. He looked small and weak. The younger man had disappeared somewhere. Maybe he'd gone to count the money.

The floor was covered in some fake wood cover and they'd put their TV in a different corner so that threw me off for a second. I thought back and placed everything in my head as it had been. I went into the kitchen and opened a couple of drawers looking for something to use as a tool. I came up with a screwdriver. When I went back, the old man looked at it.

‘What are you going to do?'

I went over to the corner of the room and started hacking away at the laminated floor. It was hard and I couldn't get anywhere with it. The young man came out then. He said, ‘What the fuck?'

I hacked away, chipping the flooring, trying to get some leverage. The old man was in a seat, watching me, his eyes fearful. The younger one stood in the doorway. There was a gleam of hunger in his look. I pushed past him and went back into the kitchen. I came back with a larger screwdriver and started chopping away at the glue beneath the flooring. It was a bastard of a job and I was sweating by the time I managed to get some kind of clearing. Now I could see the old black and white tiles. Another twenty minutes of scraping and I'd hacked enough of the new floor away. I pushed the screwdriver into a crack between two tiles and prised up a white one and saw the hole.

I didn't know what I thought I'd find. I didn't know if I'd find anything at all. When I saw the box, I didn't recognize it. It was just a purple box with some foreign name written on the side. And then I remembered. I reached in. The old bloke was close to me, peering over my shoulder. I heard the younger one move forward.

I opened the box. Inside were all the creams and lotions, all untouched as far as I could see. She hadn't used any of them. Paget had even taken that from her.

There was something else in the box. Between the bottles and tubes was a small brown padded envelope. I took it out and opened it up. Inside was a DVD in a plastic sleeve. On the DVD were two words: ‘For Joe'.

I drove back to Browne's with dread in my gut.

I suppose I should've thought before of her secret place. She'd shown me it, and she must've thought I'd go there and open it up if anything happened to her. But she would never explain it all properly because she knew I'd do something to stop her. Probably I would've.

I would've gone there, I guess, if I'd known Marriot and Paget had been behind her death. I would've figured things out.

Back. Always back.

Those crows were circling again. Time was circling. I was circling, going around, going back to Brenda.

When I got back to Browne's, he was out. I wondered where he was, if he was alright. But, I knew, sometimes, this late, he'd go to an offy or the twenty-four-hour supermarket. Usually, he went for booze, and then he'd stop off at a late-opening pub or three on the way back. Anyway, I was relieved he wasn't there, though I didn't know why.

I put the DVD in the player and sat on the sofa. I grabbed the remote control, tuned the TV to the DVD channel and pressed play.

The room looked familiar, but I couldn't place it. It was small and like a hundred other lounges. The camera was still, placed at one end of the room so that the sofa was centre, face-on. The lens was wide-angled and took in most of the room, but some blurred dark shadows fogged part of the image. The picture was in colour, but poor quality. There was no sound. My guts were clenching again and cold sweat seeped from my body. The fear was back. A lanky black woman came in and walked towards the sofa. Her back was to the camera. She wore a short skirt, high heels, white blouse. She turned then and sat awkwardly on the sofa. She held a cigarette in one hand and a tall glass of clear liquid in the other. I knew what was in that glass. It was gin.

A man entered then, walking heavily towards the sofa. With him, was a small girl with long blonde hair. She must have been ten at most. She walked slowly, with small steps, so that the man had to coax her. She kept her head bowed, not wanting to look at anything, just in case it was all real and not some fucking awful nightmare.

From behind me, Browne's voice said, ‘So, you're back.' He was quiet for a second, and I knew he was looking at the TV. ‘Hey, isn't that… what's—'

I paused the DVD. My hands were trembling. I couldn't look at Browne. I stared at the screen, at Brenda's face, looking frail and scared and trying to look strong, like I knew she was, like she must've been.

Browne said, ‘Jesus Christ.'

‘You don't want to see this,' I said.

For a long time – or what seemed like a long time – Browne said nothing and I thought he must have gone. I stared at the hazy image, at the large eyes of Brenda. She was looking at the girl and she had a kind of dim, sad smile, like she was offering the girl encouragement, like she was saying, ‘Don't worry, I'm here'. I thought I saw tears in her eyes, but the picture was too grainy and I could've imagined it. Maybe I just knew that she would've had tears in her eyes.

I heard the sound of rustling plastic bags, clinking bottles, shopping bags being put on the ground. Browne came forward and sat next to me on the sofa. The trembling had moved to my stomach and I felt a cold sweat seep out of my body.

Finally, Browne said, ‘If you've got to look at this, I'll do it with you.'

I forced myself to clutch the remote control. My palm was wet. I pressed play. The image cut to another scene, this time from high up, in the corner of the room. This camera was static too, and fogged in the same way, by dark shadows. So, they'd set up hidden cameras. That meant that whoever was here, in this film, had no idea that they were being recorded.