Authors: Mark Billingham
‘Have you really got nothing better to do on a Saturday morning?’
‘Depends what you mean by better,’ Quinlan said. ‘More enjoyable, almost certainly. More important, no.’
‘Well I have,’ Ed said. ‘So, are you asking me or telling me?’
‘At this moment, I’m asking you.’
‘Right then.’
‘But I
can
tell you it would be a good move to come in and talk to me.’
‘Like I thought, an invitation. It’s not formal because you haven’t got anything worth
making
it formal.’
‘I spoke to Annette Bailey …’
Ed had been pacing up and down the living room with the phone. He stopped at the garden end and looked out. It was a good
day for tennis. Maybe he could take a walk down to the club, see if there was anyone hanging about who fancied a game. Somebody
he could beat.
‘Mr Dunning?’
He could still remember every detail of that evening. Six years ago, nearly seven. A month or so after everything had fallen
apart. He
remembered her wanting it and then not wanting it, changing her mind in a heartbeat. How insanely unfair it had seemed to
him that she still had the choice.
He remembered standing in the garden, taking that bloody swing down.
‘Maybe I should think about getting that solicitor.’
‘Like I said …’
‘My prerogative, I know.’ He began to pace again. ‘Maybe I should start talking to one about suing you people for harassment.
How does that sound?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I might, because this is getting ridiculous now.’
‘Quite pricey though, I would have thought.’
‘What?’
‘Legal fees. For someone who hasn’t paid his mortgage in three months.’
Sue appeared in the doorway. She saw his face, mouthed, ‘What?’ He shook his head. She stood watching him until he waved her
away and she backed out of the room.
‘I’m only thinking of you, Mr Dunning.’
He walked to the doorway, pushed the door closed. ‘So, come on then, what did she say?
Annette
…’
‘It’s not something I really want to discuss on the phone.’
Ed turned and leaned back against the door.
‘I’m sure you can understand that, Mr Dunning.’
That woman …
Wanting it then not wanting it, blowing hot and cold.
Hurting
her? Jesus Christ … like she had any idea what it meant to be in pain, what it really
meant?
It had poured with rain, that day he’d stood in the garden and taken the swing apart. His hands had slipped, bled as he tore
at the wet, cold metal and he remembered turning and looking up to see Sue watching him from an upstairs window.
‘I don’t understand a fucking thing,’ he said, quietly.
‘Well I’ll explain, if you come in.’
‘No …’
‘You can tell me all about the game you wanted Annette Bailey to play.’
‘
What?
’
‘The things you asked her to do.’
He pushed hard away from the door. ‘I’m not telling you anything, because there’s nothing to talk about, all right? This is
just getting ludicrous now … it’s stupid. Like thousands of other people I happened to be in Florida when a girl went missing,
and I made the mistake of lying about what I was doing at the time. That’s all. I lied because of exactly what you’re doing
now, dredging up shit that has nothing to do with anything. You want to push this any further, you’d better get some evidence
and then I’ll find the money to hire the best legal team I can and make you look stupid.’
He was feeling a lot better suddenly, stronger. ‘Thinking about it, I don’t think that’s likely to cost me very much …’
Sue was in the kitchen, waiting for Ed to finish on the phone. He walked in and went to the fridge, spoke with his back to
her.
‘Quinlan.’
‘What did she want?’
‘She spoke to Annette Bailey.’
Sue said, ‘Oh,’ and waited again. When Ed closed the fridge door and turned to her, he had a carton of orange juice in his
hand. He looked calm. There was even a hint of a smile.
‘You ask me, she’s pretty well qualified to be investigating the murder of that girl in Florida,’ he said. ‘Quinlan, I mean.
She’s got about as much going on upstairs as that girl did.’ He raised the carton in a mock toast and drank from it.
‘It’s not just Florida though, is it?’ Sue sat down at their small kitchen table. ‘They’re investigating two crimes now.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s not supposed to mean anything. They are though, aren’t they?’
‘I don’t know
what
they’re doing.’ He reopened the fridge to put the carton back. ‘I don’t think
they
know what they’re doing.’
‘So what did she say?’
‘She wants me to go in and talk to her.’
‘I meant the Bailey woman.’
He stared at her for a few seconds, then shrugged. The half-smile was still there. ‘Doesn’t matter, does it? She was probably
pissed anyway.’
‘Or stoned.’
He nodded, pleased. ‘I told her where to get off, in so many words. I don’t think she was expecting that. They think you’re
going to be intimidated or scared of them. They
love
that.’
‘Yes, but you don’t want to antagonise her.’
‘What’s she going to do?’ He walked behind her to the worktop, turned and walked back again. ‘I’m going to really enjoy telling
everyone later on. I’ll bet none of
them
told her where she could go.’
Sue thought, why would they? but she said nothing. Ed was moving easily, on the balls of his feet, like he was stalking a
baseline. He was making a good job of hiding the tension, the nerves, but Sue knew him better than anyone. Knew how much he
hid.
‘Listen, we don’t have to go tonight.’
‘Course we do,’ he said. ‘I’m very much looking forward to getting completely and utterly slaughtered.’
‘There’s no need to do that.’
‘Oh yes there is.’
‘One of us should stay sober though, yes? Then we can always chicken out and drive home if it gets too horrendous.’
‘Fuck
that
,’ he said. ‘Horrendous is exactly the way I want it.’ He stopped behind her and began to rub her shoulders. ‘You really want
to see any of these people ever again?’
Sue said that she didn’t and told him not to stop.
Dave held out his bag and the man behind the stall emptied the onions, okra and sweet potatoes into it. He handed over the
cash and the man gave him his change. The man said, ‘Take care, yeah,’ and turned towards his next customer. Dave said, ‘You
too,’ and held out his fist. The man looked a little awkward, but eventually turned back and touched his fist, just for a
second, to Dave’s.
Dave said, ‘Thanks, man,’ and walked away to buy the meat.
He loved Brixton Market on a Saturday morning. The music, the crowds, the vibe of the place. It was pulsing with energy, thronged
with shoppers, black, white and Asian faces. It fascinated him, these hundreds of people going about their business. The way
that, for those few minutes or even seconds when their lives intersected with others – a look or a word exchanged here, a
bump of the shoulders there – there was a connection made and that connection was passed on. Everyone had a link with someone
else, like electricity moving between circuits, but once that power was cut and the connection was dead, each person went
back to their own life. Drifted quietly back into the shadows of themselves and got on with it.
They ate, they slept, they did what bodies needed to do.
They fucked or got fucked over.
They beat their children.
Whatever, didn’t matter.
Here though, buzzing under a clear blue sky, everyone was just part of a crowd. As happy or as miserable as the rest of the
mass, each one moving in whatever direction the whole dictated. There were a few of course, like himself, who stood in isolation
from it, though he had no idea how many like him there were. A handful, no more than that. Just a few, moving through the
crowd easily but without ever quite becoming part of it. It wasn’t just about being smarter; it was something he could never
quite define, but it felt like being tuned to a different frequency.
He saw the wannabe guitarist from the coffee shop talking to someone in a small cluster of people outside the bakery. He raised
his hand and the man nodded a cursory hello.
Dave grinned and pushed on.
He enjoyed this ‘joining in’ precisely because, however much it seemed that way, he never really was. Not quite.
The result of things that had happened to him in the past, maybe. Or perhaps it was hard-wired, this ability, and he truly
believed it
was
an ability. Yes, it was standing above or … apart, but he could honestly say that he never thought of himself as special
in any way, or any better than anyone else. He wasn’t arrogant like the Ed Dunnings of this world. He never assumed he knew
better.
He knew
different
, that was all.
He stopped at the stall in the indoor market that sold organic meat – always organic – but he still felt a little uneasy staring
at the slabs of beef, the glistening bodies of chickens and rabbits, the unplucked game birds on hooks at eye level. More
than once he had tried to convince Marina that the two of them should become vegetarians. He showed her a grisly documentary
about the workings of an abattoir and cut out magazine articles that proved a meat-free diet was healthier. He told her it
was the right thing to do, but she was having none of it and, watching her tucking into a bacon sandwich or feasting on
pork crackling, he knew it was a lost cause. It wasn’t a problem though. However
he
felt, if that was what she wanted then he was never going to push it. That was not the way a unit like theirs worked. They
would do it together or not at all.
Same as everything else.
He picked out the lamb and paid quickly, keen to make a getaway before the smell of the meat had him reaching for his inhaler.
He checked the list he had written before coming out. Satisfied himself that he had not forgotten anything.
They would shine tonight.
Competition was ultimately pointless, but the others had clearly entered into one and even if their crockery was not quite
as fancy and things were a little more crowded around the dinner table, this would be the evening that stood head and shoulders
above the others.
He and Marina had been … underestimated, he knew that.
He very much looked forward to setting things straight.
He eased back into the crowd and moved slowly outside again, towards the coffee shop where he would sit and wait until it
was time to collect Marina from rehearsals.
In the crowd, and out of it.
He subscribed to more than a dozen magazines which he downloaded regularly on to one of his three tablets. Science and technology,
philosophy, politics, true crime. In truth, he never got round to most of them or gave up after a few pages when he did, but
in one he had read an amazing article about people who had died for a few minutes on the operating table. Died and come back.
They all talked about feeling as if they were floating and looking down on their own bodies.
In the crowd and out of it.
It felt like that.
A man in a hurry bumped into him and kept walking. Without looking round, the man held up a hand and shouted, ‘Sorry.’ Dave
smiled and said, ‘Not a problem.’ The connection, made. A few paces further on and Dave dropped his shoulder, stepped across
and eased it into a woman coming in the other direction.
She turned and told him angrily to look where he was going.
Dave smiled again.
Passing it on.
Marina walked out of the toilet cubicle, adjusted her skirt and sat down in front of the dressing-room mirror. Her hair was
a mess and her skin looked terrible. She leaned closer to the mirror. There was a small cluster of whiteheads at the corner
of her mouth.
Fuck!
She did
not
want to look shit, tonight of all nights. Skinny Sue and Fat Angie dressed to the nines like Laurel and Hardy in expensive
frocks. It wouldn’t matter how great Dave told her she looked, how many times he tried to persuade her.
You’re perfect
. We’re
perfect
.
She knew the truth.
She opened her bag, took out a smaller one and laid her make-up out in front of her.
The toilet flushed and a few seconds later Philip emerged, zipping up his jeans. He stood there with his hands on his hips,
grinning like a schoolboy and watching her in the mirror. He said, ‘You are
seriously
good at that.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m a good actress.’
‘I know that. I mean—’
‘I was
acting
, all right?’
He laughed, just a little. ‘Not what it looked like to me.’
‘You had your eyes closed.’
‘You telling me you didn’t enjoy that just as much as I did?’
‘Remember Kelly, the sex worker from Camberwell?’
He waited.
‘I used it, just like you told me. I
focused
.’
‘Bullshit …’
‘Centred enough for you, was I?’ She picked up a lipstick and met his eyes in the mirror.
He nodded slowly, smiling with his eyes half closed, like he was
enjoying being had. Like he could not help but admire what she had done. He said, ‘Right,’ and ‘Well.’
‘So do I get the part then?’
He nodded towards the cubicle. ‘What …?’
‘In the show.’ She finished applying her lipstick, leaned forward and pursed her lips. ‘The part you told me I had when you
were still trying to get in my pants. You know, the main one?’
He shifted from one foot to the other for a few seconds, then dragged out the chair next to Marina and sat down. He took his
tobacco tin from a waistcoat pocket, took out the rolling papers. ‘Listen, there isn’t a
main
one, you know that. This is an ensemble piece … this is devised around everyone in the group. I can’t play favourites just
because … you know.’
Marina nodded and picked up an eyebrow pencil.
‘You’re an arsehole,’ she said. A simple statement of fact, because she’d known this pussy-arsed little speech of his was
coming; known it before she’d let him persuade her into that cubicle. It was the reason she’d got down on her knees. ‘I was
acting and you’re an arsehole.’
‘Well, I’m sorry that’s the way you feel.’ He licked a rolling paper. ‘I genuinely am.’
‘And you can stick your poxy devised piece of shit up your arse.’
‘As you wish.’ He popped the roll-up between his lips and lit it. ‘You know I can’t refund any of the tuition fees, don’t
you?’
‘Whatever.’
‘Course rules, I’m afraid.’ He picked a strand of tobacco from his lip, watched her for a few seconds, then slapped his hands
on his thighs and stood up. He turned at the door and said, ‘Just so you know, you weren’t
that
great in there.’ He nodded towards the cubicle again. ‘Maybe you weren’t the only one who was acting, you know?’
She spun round fast. ‘Just watch yourself walking home at night. All right,
Philip?
’
He snorted. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You heard me.’
‘This some “black” thing, is it? You got gang connections? Shagged a Yardie or two?’
She spat at him, but it didn’t even reach halfway to the door.
‘So what, you going to come at me with a hairbrush up some dark alley?’
‘Not me, wanker. People who care about me.’
He laughed at her. ‘Seriously? Your
boyfriend?
That ratty little toerag who looks like an am-dram Raskolnikov?’
Marina didn’t know what he was talking about.
She pointed at him, hard.
She said, ‘You have no fucking
idea
what we are capable of.’