Crusher (19 page)

The silence had re-gathered. The clock was ticking nonchalantly on the wall, a distant roar announced a motorbike doing a ton on the motorway, and the only breathing in the room was mine. The attacker lay face down on the stained threadbare rug; I could just see the whites of his eyes staring across the floor, peering under
the sofa as if looking for odd dropped coins, like my dad used to do.

Once more the street was a blue disco of police vehicles crackling with RT gossip, with neighbours flocked behind a cordon looking on in morbid fascination, wondering if this was going to become a regular occurrence. At least this time I didn’t have to change out of my clothes. I had tried not to touch anything; I’d just switched on the light, grabbed my phone from the table where it had been charging, called the cops and went to sit at the foot of the stairs. I was still in my pyjama bottoms when they knocked at the door, and I stayed sitting on the stairs until the Scene of Crime people brought me my regulation white paper suit and trainers. As I followed the uniforms out into the street and down towards the car that would take me to the station, I noticed the onlookers in their dressing gowns and hastily-tugged-on jeans nudge each other and nod,
Him again
. By the time I got back from the nick there’d probably be a petition going round to have me evicted.

If
I got back from the nick. When the door of the interview room opened and Prendergast entered with Amobi, the sad, bitter smirk on the older man’s face suggested that if he hadn’t got me for the last one he’d get me for this. I felt like smirking too when I looked at
him.
Do you know what sort of noises your daughter makes in bed?
But I kept that to myself, for now.

Amobi was carrying a supermarket carrier bag, one of those “lifetime” ones with the pious ecological slogans printed on the side. It was nearly empty; I wondered what it was for. Was he planning to go shopping after this interview? Amobi left the bag on the floor, and he and Prendergast pulled back their chairs and sat down.

“OK, Mr. Maguire,” said Prendergast with weary resignation, “why don’t you tell us what happened? This time.”

This time
. As if my last statement had been a fairy tale and this was just going to be the sequel.

“A guy came into my house and tried to kill me,” I said.

“Why did he do that?”

I shrugged. “Ask him.”

“Do you know who this man was?”

“Nope. But he seemed highly-trained. Like a professional.”

“A hit man, you mean?” asked Prendergast. From his look you’d think I’d claimed the guy was a werewolf.

“Maybe.”

“But you fought him off.”

“I got lucky.”

“So how did this … 
hit man
get into your house? Did he break in?”

“I think he had keys, and he let himself in. Same as last time, when he killed my dad.”

“What makes you think this was the same man?” said Amobi. Prendergast probably couldn’t bring himself to admit the possibility that it wasn’t me who’d murdered my father.

“The old guys at the Weaver’s Arms mentioned a man who called himself Hans. He said he was a journalist and he bought them drinks all night. He got my dad pissed and nicked his keys. This guy matched their description, plus he spoke German.”

“You spoke to him?” asked Prendergast.

“He said ‘scheisse’ when I stabbed him with that syringe,” I said. “It’s German for
police officer
.”

Prendergast took a deep breath. Amobi cut in quickly, “We’ll show those witnesses his photograph and see if they agree he was the same man,” said Amobi.

“In the meantime,” said Prendergast, “why would a hit man come after you and your dad?”

“No idea,” I said.

“We know you’ve been making enquiries of your own,” said Amobi. “Did you talk to anyone, make anyone suspicious?”

“Like who?” I said.

“Stop acting like a twat, Maguire,” rumbled Prendergast.

“I’ve talked to lots of people,” I said. For a minute it occurred to me to mention Elsa Kendrick. The cops could track her down far more easily than I could. But what would be the point? If her husband had been telling the truth, she might have had a motive, yeah. But it was Hans who’d killed my dad, and judging by Elsa’s poky flat she would never have been able to afford a professional killer’s services.

“Might it have anything to do with your visit to McGovern?” asked Amobi.

“I didn’t do anything to piss him off,” I answered truthfully. And then I remembered what I’d heard at the window of Eccles’s office. Amobi seemed to notice the thought occur to me and was about to follow up when Prendergast spoke again, with an elaborately casual air that suggested he was about to wallop me with something.

“You do know, Mr. Maguire, that if you find an intruder in your house you’re only entitled to use reasonable force to eject him? You killed this man. You crushed his larynx.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill him,” I pointed out. “I was trying to stop him killing me.”

“How do you know he wanted to kill you? Did he threaten you?”

“He came at me with a knife.” Was Prendergast going
to suggest that the twenty-centimetre combat blade with the blood gutter was mine? And the guy was wearing a scabbard for decoration? Prendergast glanced at Amobi, who bent down, reached into the supermarket bag and drew out a clear plastic evidence bag wrapped around an X-shaped metallic object. Now I saw the point of the carrier bag—they’d wanted a “ta-dah” moment, when they’d confront me with a vital piece of evidence that would force me to change my story and dissolve in a sobbing heap of contradictions. Of course it didn’t work that way, because I had no idea what was in the evidence bag until Amobi unrolled it.

“Are these yours, Mr. Maguire?” said Prendergast.

I looked more closely. It was a pair of secateurs, brand-new, judging from the state of the blades. The handles were wrapped in black tape, Teflon plumber’s tape maybe. They were unlocked and lying open, the black blades gleaming nastily under the harsh strip light of the interrogation room.

“No,” I said. “We don’t have any plants to prune.”

“These aren’t for pruning,” said Prendergast. “Well, not plants, anyway. These were found in your kitchen and if they’re not yours, we have to assume the intruder brought them with him. What exactly did he say to you?”

“He didn’t say anything. He came at me with a
syringe, we fought, I grabbed the syringe and stuck him with it. It slowed him down enough for me to hit him before he stabbed me.”

“I don’t think that’s quite accurate,” said Prendergast. “If that guy had wanted to kill you, he would have just stabbed you and left. I think he was going to knock you out with the stuff in that syringe, and when you were out cold, he was going to cut one of your fingers off. Maybe more. Maybe your thumbs. But he wasn’t out to kill you—he was out to frighten you.”

I said nothing. I was staring at the secateurs in the bag, feeling a bit sick.

“So you see,” said Prendergast, “killing him wasn’t reasonable force.”

“You’re fucking kidding,” I said. “The guy wants to knock me out and cut my fingers off, and killing him isn’t reasonable force? Then what is? How was I supposed to know what he was planning? And why don’t you have that huge bloody commando knife in an evidence bag, the one that was still in his hand when the plods arrived?”

“Look, Maguire,” hissed Prendergast, leaning his pockmarked, grizzled face close to mine, “you think we’re just going to let you walk out of here when you’ve witnessed two murders in ten days? Even if you’re as innocent as you make out, which I doubt, you’re a
fucking idiot.” The sarcasm had gone—he was deadly serious, spitting out his words. “You’re sitting here making smartarse remarks when someone out there wants you mutilated or dead. You’ve been lucky so far—how long do you think you’ll last out there on your own? You think because you managed to stop this one, whoever sent him is going to give up? We know you’ve been wandering around stirring up shit and asking stupid questions. Tell us who you’ve been talking to, what they said and what you’ve heard. And then we’ll charge you with suspected manslaughter and get you remanded in custody so you’re out of harm’s way while we round up the fuckers who killed your dad. Once we’ve done that, all the charges will be dropped and you can fuck off back to your burger bar.”

I looked at him, trying in vain to spot a trace of Zoe in the face of the furious, frustrated old man facing me. Christ, did he take all this home with him?

“Do it,” I said. “Put me up in front of a judge and see how far you get. I’ve told you everything I know. Charge me with aggravated self-defence in my own house, or let me go the fuck home.”

Dawn had broken when I finally emerged from the nick, and the morning rush hour was just starting. The baggy white overalls and cheap trainers the Scene of
Crime people had given me made me look like a homeless house painter, but they were slightly warmer than walking home in bare feet and pyjama bottoms, and this being London nobody looked at me twice anyway. Amobi had taken a statement, his tone and his manner studiedly neutral. I was told I would have to testify at an inquest, again, but for now I was free to go. He even offered me a lift, if I didn’t mind waiting an hour for a patrol car to become free. Or he could get someone to call me a cab. But I didn’t want to sit around in that nick a moment longer than I had to, I didn’t want another ride in a police car, and I didn’t want to waste money on a cab. I told him I’d walk home.

In fact, I ran. The trainers weren’t bad for running in, and the overalls flapped and rustled, but they didn’t restrict my movement and I figured when I got home I could just bin them. This gave me a business idea—disposable running wear—and I had just franchised the concept across three continents and made my first billion when I turned the corner into my street and saw a slight figure in a black coat sitting on the low wall of the house opposite mine, her hands buried in her pockets, her elegantly booted legs crossed at the knee to keep warm. When my mother looked up and saw me slow to a jog she smiled and stood, and the look on her face was easy to read: happiness and deep relief.

“Finn … I called the station as soon as I heard. They said you’d already left.”

“How did you find out?” I said.

“I still have Donald’s number.” She nodded at the house she’d been sitting outside. Donald was our neighbour opposite, a white-haired old bloke who was always up at six, for no reason I’d ever been able to fathom. “I called him to find out when you were most likely to be around, and he told me about last night. What exactly happened?”

“I’m knackered, and I really need a shower,” I said.

“Please, Finn. We need to talk.”

“No, I mean—yeah. We should.” For a brief moment when I first saw her, my heart had lifted too, and I’d forgotten to be angry. Maybe it was a side-effect of nearly being murdered, but suddenly all the sulking and the tantrums seemed pointless somehow. I fished in the pocket of my overalls and found the keys I’d remembered to grab from their hook before the cops had taken me away a few hours earlier. The same keys I’d made my mother give back, the day of Dad’s funeral. “It’s just, I’d like to put some clothes on.” I opened the door.

“Oh, right, OK, sorry, I thought …”

“You can put the kettle on if you want,” I said. “Though there isn’t much to eat.”

“Why don’t I buy us both breakfast somewhere?”

“Yeah, OK.” Neutral territory, I thought, good idea.

“Where’s good around here these days?”

“Nowhere,” I said. I stood in the living room and looked around. It was hard to see any sign of a fight, or of the room being swept for evidence by the cops; at least this time there had been no blood to mop up. Dad’s urn was lying on the floor against the sofa, where the intruder had dropped it. I picked it up and checked it for cracks, but it seemed intact.

“Donald said someone broke in and attacked you,” said my mother.

“Yeah,” I said. “The same guy who killed Dad.”

“Why? What did he want?”

“I don’t know.”
Not yet
, I thought.

“Oh God, Finn, I was so frightened when I heard. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“You can say it,” I said.
“I told you so.”
She looked at me, puzzled. “You told me to change the locks,” I said.

“I should have told you not to,” she replied. “Then you would have done it, just to spite me.” I thought about that. She was right.

“Let me go and change,” I said.

I wasn’t being funny, but there really was nowhere decent to eat locally at that time in the morning, except for the identikit hotels along the motorway crammed with
identikit businessmen. That’s how my mother and I ended up in Max Snax with our order being taken by my replacement—a guy in his early twenties whose face was a mosaic of acne and whose mouth hung slightly open, revealing spectacularly crooked teeth. Mum studiously avoided looking at him and focused on searching the menu for something edible. She finally settled on a vegetarian special that I knew wasn’t very special, and was only vegetarian in the sense that it didn’t have any meat in it. It didn’t have many vegetables either, unless you counted spuds and soya. I ordered an orange juice and toast, figuring that if Jerry in the kitchen gobbed on the toast it would be easy to spot. He wouldn’t have done it out of malice—it would have been his idea of a joke. I really didn’t miss this place, I realized.

“Are you a regular here?” asked my mum as we took our seats. Jerry had shouted my name and waved from the kitchen, and Trudy had given me a myopic smile when they noticed us at the counter.

“I used to work here,” I said.

“What, for pocket money?”

“Didn’t Dad tell you?”

“He told me that you’d joined a boxing club and you showed real promise. That you ran ten kilometres a day. That you’d left school early but hadn’t worked out what you wanted to do yet.” Peering into her sandwich she
didn’t notice my look of bemused contempt. “You always were unconventional, very single-minded. I knew you wouldn’t end up stacking shelves in a supermarket.”

“I used to work here full-time,” I said. “I used to dream of stacking shelves in a supermarket, but they wouldn’t have me, because I still can’t read.”