Bubblegum Smoothie (5 page)

He tightens his grip around the white plastic wrapping in one hand.

And he tightens his grip around the knife in his other.

He stops at her door. Takes a few moments to inhale the warm summer air, to enjoy the moment. He can’t hear for the buzzing in his hears. The buzzing that needs to be cured. The buzzing that will be cured, very very soon.

He knocks on her door and this just makes the buzzing more intense.

He hears her get up from her sofa. Hears the
tap tap tap
of her high heels against the wooden floor inside. He’d forgotten that little detail. Forgotten all about it.

Maybe he’ll
tap tap tap
his knife all around her naked body before he sticks it inside her…

He hears the lock turn. Hears keys rattling.

“Just a sec,” she says, in her heavenly voice.

No problem
, he thinks.
Take all the time in the world. It’s your last bit of time, after all.

Eventually, she opens the door. They face one another, no window glass between them for the first time, no filter between the predator and the prey.

She looks at him with narrowed eyes. “Can I… can I help you with something?” She looks at the plastic. And then he swears she looks at the knife, but she doesn’t react. Stupid girl. Humans are so intent on not insulting their own kind that they’d trust somebody pointing a gun at them as long as they had a smile on their face.

“You can,” he says.

He raises his knife. Steps through the door.

“You can come to my car without struggling.”

She stares at him. He sees her cheeks going pale, tears welling up in her dilating eyes. He sees her breathing get fast, heavier.

He loves this part.

“I… Please leave—”

He senses right away that she is a runner so he throws himself at her.

He lands on top of her. Presses his hand against her mouth. Feels her teeth feebly attempting to bite.

“Shouldn’t have ground those teeth down, should you? Might be able to get away then.”

She tries to struggle free but he just kicks her front door shut. He knows nobody else is home. He has studied her for weeks and he knows she’s always alone on a Wednesday afternoon. Me-time. Well, she is about to be a part of his “me-time.” Slightly different, slightly more adventurous.

Pressing her down, he manages to reach for the chloroform cloth in his pocket. He knows he should’ve had it in his hand from the get-go, but then what fun would any of this be? He wants to see her struggle. He wants to see her think she can get away.

And then he wants to press the cloth over her nose and mouth and watch her life end.

Because when she wakes up, she won’t be living a life, not anymore.

She’ll be living a nightmarish epilogue spanning hundreds of pages of pain.

He moves the cloth over her mouth. Presses hard, so hard that he can feel the bones of her cheeks protruding into his hand. He listens to her moan. Feels her tears against his hand. Sees the fear give way to begging, the begging give way to anger, and then the anger give way to…

“Go to sleep, Hannah,” he says. “Go to sleep.”

Her eyes flutter. Her moaning recedes. Her struggling eases.

“And just pretend everything that happens from this point on is one big nightmare.”

Her eyes close.

Her moaning stops completely.

She is asleep.

He smiles as he wraps her in plastic and lifts her up.

Time for the real fun to start.

EIGHT

“Will he be long?”

“Chill your beans, sunshine. What’s up? Getting twitchy sitting around with a he-she too long?”

I sat against the table in the corner of the Black Bull pub. When Martha told me we’d be meeting her “weapons guy” in a pub this afternoon, I had somewhere sleazier in mind. A pub down a backstreet, or an alleyway, somewhere like that. Not a family pub that prided itself more on its fish and chips than its fine ale.

I sipped my Coke, which tasted flat. Looked around at the punters who hung around these places at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon. Men in suits tapping around on their shitty HTC phones. Nothing on the iPhone, that was for sure. Benefit pram-pushing scroungers with more flab on show than clothes sat in the corner, laughing away over their pints of cider while their kids looked back at their fantastic examples of paternal care. In the corner of the pub, there was a dumb looking-fat guy with a head twice the size of mine. He was piling pound coins on top of one another, his pint of Fosters barely touched.

“I thought you liked the pub, anyway?” Martha said. She was sipping on another white wine, her second glass of the day after the one she’d had back at her home.

I cringed. “Then you don’t know me very well.”

“Ah,” she said. “Another of those things you’re good at
pretending
you like without actually liking?”

“Bingo.”

“Is there anything you actually do like, Blake? I mean I’ve never seen you with a woman.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Go on. Name a single woman you’ve dated for longer than two weeks.”

I felt my cheeks blushing at the qualification that she’d just gone and tagged onto the end. “Well… It’s hard work. When you’re busy. It’s—”

“Hard work. Right.”

She sat back. Grinned. Sipped on her wine.

“I don’t know what you’re grinning about,” I said. I was feeling warm, and that was making me a bit more irritable than I should be. Buying the shitty flat Coke from my dwindling Fun Funds was hard enough. What good was a glass of flat Coke from the Fun Funds when there was nothing remotely fun about it?

“I just heard rumours, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, you can shove your rumours up your… your whatever the hell you have.”

Martha laughed. Laughed, and I saw Mart again.

“Does it ever feel weird?” I asked. I hadn’t really planned to broach the topic of Martha’s gender, but it slipped out of nowhere and the heat was making me woozy.

“What?”

“Like… your gender,” I said, leaning forward so I could lower my voice. “Do you ever, like, wake up and think you’re Mart again then look in the mirror and get a shock? Or go to have a wank and… ta da!”

Martha narrowed her eyes. Shook her head. “Blake, honey, I felt
wrong
when I was Mart. I woke up when I was Mart and I looked in the mirror and felt shocked to see a man looking back at me. Now?” She held out her hand. Stretched out her pink-nailed fingers. “I feel more me than I have in my entire life. And that makes me happy.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What?” she said, grinning along.

“It’s just fucking weird,” I said. “Just… Like you do look full-on woman.”

“Charming.”

“And it’s just… when I picture you as Mart but in a dress—”

“Bit weird.”

“—it’s wrong.”

“Doubly charming.”

I shook my head. Sipped some more flat Coke. Wasn’t sure how I was going to weasel my way out of this one, or even what I was trying to say to Martha in the first place.

“Anyway, to dig you out of your misery, my man’s here.”

I turned around and looked at the door.

One movie cliché about shady arms dealers are that they’re skinny, gaunt men with short hair and yellowing skin. Maybe a gold tooth or two, and eyes as grey as a fish’s back.

And to be honest, those prejudices are usually right. Hiding in plain sight was a wonderful thing.

This bloke, walking towards our table, fit the bill of the clichéd arms dealer to a tee. He had a little pinhead, deep-set eyes and yellow teeth. Even though it was a scorching July day outside the pub, he was wearing a grey fleece and long, black trousers. Didn’t seem to have broken into a sweat at all though.

He nodded at Martha, and Martha nodded back at him.

I nodded at him too, but he just glared at me like I was something he’d just puked up the night before.

He took a seat at our table. Martha half-smiled at him. Jesus, these two weren’t half making themselves look shady. Even the fat-headed dummy playing Jenga with his coins was looking at this guy with worry on his face.

“A drink?” Martha asked.

This bloke shook his head. Shifted up beside me. Then he tilted his head back, as if asking, “What do you want?” Was this bloke mute or something?

Martha looked at me, widened her eyes. “Blake?”

“Oh, er.” I cleared my throat, feeling on the spot and out of practice. “I… I’m wondering about a knife—”

“And you are?”

His voice was surprisingly high-pitched and Lancashire for a man who I’d expected to have a gruff Eastern European accent.

I cleared my throat again. Looked at Martha, then back at this bloke.

“Blake Dent,” I said. “I’m… I’m a bounty hunter—”

“The fuck do you want?”

I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to inform this numbnut that I’d been in the middle of telling him what I wanted before he interrupted. “I’m looking to identify a knife. An illegal knife. Automatic knife called a… a Marifone Killswitch. Believe they’re sold on the black market at—”

“Killswitch. Nah. Never had one. No idea.”

My stomach sank in an instant. I glared over at Martha. What a shitload of good this bloody meeting was. Five hundred thousand—five hundred pissing thousand pounds—all for a meeting with a nearly-mute who needed a lesson in social interaction.

“Well, thanks for your help,” I said, eager to get away. “Very nice to—”

“Wait. A Killswitch. It’s coming to me actually. It’s coming to me.”

My stomach sank even further when I realised what this guy was doing. He wanted money too. The bald-headed bastard actually wanted some more of my bounty. Hopefully he didn’t come from the Martha school of haggling or before I knew it, I’d be getting a tenner to keep from a million.

I sat back down. Pulled out my wallet. Slid a ten-pound note across the table.

He looked at it. Scoffed. “This man for real?” he asked Martha.

I wanted to tell him I was more for real than his bloody he-she associate, but I needed information so thought best not to piss him off for now.

I slipped another ten across.

And another.

And another and another until eventually he had a hundred quid in front of him.

“Getting there,” he said. “It’s… it’s on the tip of my tongue. Maybe another hundred and I’ll—”

“Oh, screw this,” I said, glaring at Martha. “Good job, Martha. Very stellar job. You can say goodbye to your cut, I tell you that.”

“Wait,” she said. She took a few deep breaths. Leaned in towards this bald wanker. “I… I’m getting £500,000 soon—”

My cheeks flared up. “Martha, don’t—”

“And I’ll give you a ten-thousand pound cut if you allow us free access to information over the next month. Well, not free, but you catch my drift.”

The bald guy was silent. I couldn’t believe Martha. Now this bastard knew she was getting £500,000—five hundred thousand of
my
money—he’d haggle for more.

But he slipped the notes back over the table. Tapped them as they rested in front of me.

“Ten thousand it is,” he said. “Funny actually. I did have a Marifone Killswitch in up until about… two weeks ago, I think it was.”

My skin tingled. “You sold it?”

“Yes.”

“And… and do you remember the guy?”

He stared ahead. “Yes.”

I swallowed a lump in my throat. I could stuff my mouth with Halls Soothers and kiss this bloke if he wasn’t a bloody asshole. And the ten K was coming from Martha’s cut, too. I’d done alright really.

“What did he look like?”

The bloke tapped his fingers against the table. Nodded ahead.

“Funnily enough, he’s just over there.”

Martha swung around. I scanned the area, my pulse thumping in my temple as I looked for a guy in the corner, someone lurking at a table.

“Who?” I asked. “Where?”

And then I saw exactly who the arms guy was looking at.

“Fat baldie over there. First guy to order off me who had to read the knife name off a note. But it was him.”

I felt my shoulders slump as I stared at the swellhead stacking coins.

The coins tumbled over, and this dummy let out a little whimper.

“Nice seeing you. I’ll be in touch about that ten thousand.”

The arms bloke disappeared out of the pub, and Martha and I were left staring at the simpleton in the corner.

“Doesn’t strike me as the serial killing sort of guy,” Martha said.

“Me neither,” I said, as I bit my tongue through my disappointment. “Me neither.”

NINE

As Martha and I approached the fat simpleton sat stacking pound coins on top of one another, it’s safe to say neither of us were holding our breath.

I cleared my throat as I stood opposite this beast of a guy. It was hard to tell how tall he was while he was sitting down, but it was hard to ignore his weight. His left manboob, tucked behind his dirty blue polo shirt, was at least as big as my entire ass put together. It was probably bigger than both Martha’s tits too.

But I didn’t tell her that.

“Hello?” I said. This fat bald-headed guy concentrated hard on his new pile of coins. I found it impossible to believe that this guy would ever want to buy a specialist knife from a dodgy arms dealer. Shit, I questioned whether he’d even have one hundred quid to spare, let alone £1,500. Sure, he had plenty of pound coins, but if he had enough money he’d buy himself a bloody Jenga set and stay at home.

I cleared my throat again. Needed a lozenge, realised I was going to have to wait. “Hello?”

This time, the guy stopped concentrating. His dark brown eyes poked past the coins and looked right at me, like a camera refocusing. He was breathing heavily, and he absolutely reeked of sweat and ass.

I tried to hold the best smile I could without passing out from the anal fumes. “Can I buy you a drink?”

He narrowed his bloodshot eyes. Looked at me, then at Martha, then at me again.

“No drink,” he said.

I looked at Martha. She raised her thinly trimmed eyebrows.

“No drink it is then,” I said. “You mind if we sit here?”

He observed us for another couple of seconds. Observed us, his baggy eyes twitching with every move.