Sucker Punch (24 page)

I walked around to the other side of the motorhome as Ed buzzed down the window.

“I wanted to say thank you,” I said.

“No problem.”

I spat tobacco at the ground. Turned, dropped the cigarette and began to walk to the police station.

And because I had plenty of self-discipline, I waited until I got to the front steps before I broke into a run.

“They dropped you at your hotel,” says Wallace.

“That's correct.”

Sorry, Ed.

Sorry, Marie.

I'm not that kind of bloke. You want to call it being brave and facing my responsibilities; I call it fucking myself too early in the game. And maybe I'm a coward, but I couldn't just walk into a police station and start spilling my guts. My story so far, it wasn't for the police. If it wasn't good enough to pass the Ed Test, then it certainly wasn't good enough to put in front of the fucking 5-0.

You guys might believe in the almighty power of the authorities, but I've seen too much to hang onto my faith.

I ducked into a side street, melted into a hurried walk, then down to a stroll. Tried not to look behind me, but I kept listening for the RV rumbling around the corner. My back prickled, but it was nothing compared to the ache in my neck and the painful itch of what used to be my left ear.

Sorry, Ed.

Sorry, Marie.

You guys were the ones I'd face on a jury. Mr and Mrs Whitebread Middle America. Twelve of you. Because something like this led to a jury, ended with a cell. Nelson tried to shoot me and it was my fault? That's what the survey said, and there was no reason to think the cops would believe otherwise.

I couldn't do time. Not again. I was scared as I walked, my heart thumping with something other than the exercise. This was a strange country and I was a stranger in it. The one thing I'd learned: you couldn't trust anyone. That bloke you thought was a friend, the bloke you thought was looking out for you? He was a liar. Worse than that, he was a fucking security guard or something and he was one wrong comment away from shoving a gun in your face.

The stroll became laboured, my legs seizing up. I took a breather by a newspaper vending machine, leaned on it and looked back up the street. No sign of the RV. I laughed. Scared out of my mind because of an elderly couple in a fucking motorhome.

A guy in a suit quickened his step as he passed me.

There I was, fitting in after all.

Another crazy bastard.

I found my way back to the hotel, grabbed my pills from my room.

The cash was gone. Nelson must've taken it. Or the maid. I pulled open my wallet, found a stack of notes in there, the last of my holiday money.

Bollocks to it. I didn't need to eat and I didn't have time to hang around here. No doubt Ed and Marie had done their civic duty and called the cops themselves. As I got to the foyer, I spotted a middle-aged woman getting out of a white cab. She was loaded down with shopping bags, the paper-and-rope deals you got at the classy boutiques. I hurried through the doors, out and slipped into the back seat of the cab before she noticed me. I dug out Nelson's directions and passed them forward to the driver.

“Reckon you can get me there?” I said.

The driver looked at me in the rear view. “It's way out of my way.”

“But you could get me there.”

“I don't mean to be rude or nothing, but this'll cost you.”

I held up a fistful of banknotes. “More than this?”

“I got you, sir,” he said, screaming the cab out into traffic. I watched the diehard shopper frown at the taxi as we left her in our dust.

“She doesn't look too happy,” I said.

“Fuck her, and pardon my French, but those ladies, they think a cabbie's their fucking houseboy.” He shook his head. “Not this cabbie, no sir. Got me some dignity left, kinda like to hang onto it as long as possible.”

“Too right.”

Most of the journey, the driver kept his mouth shut. Not like I wouldn't have talked to him, but I liked it that he didn't feel the need to chat about nothing. I just wished we had more of that in Britain. It'd be a far happier place if people knew when to shut the fuck up. And the silence gave me time to think. I swallowed a fistful of codeine to make up for lost time, caught the cabbie watching me in the mirror.

“They're for my back,” I said.

“I ain't judging.”

“Good. Because I was starting to like you.”

Two hours on, I pointed to Nelson's house and we pulled up outside. I got out of the cab, paid the guy. The fare was a gouger.

“You free to wait?”

“How long you gonna be?”

“As long as I need to be.”

“I got other calls, man. I can't be—”

“And I've got plenty of money. The exchange rate's shitty. You want to stay out here, I'll chuck in another hundred on top of waiting time and whatever you're going to stiff me on the way back.”

He looked like he was thinking about it, his bottom lip stuck out. He reached out for the Tex Avery wolf figurine on the dashboard and flicked its head. The wolf bobbled. I watched him.

“Yeah, why not?” he said.

I didn't expect Nelson to be home and he didn't disappoint me. I went round to the side of his place to look for a back yard. An awkward hop over a small picket fence and I was there, crossing in front of a small pool. The water feature — which looked like a pipe chugging water — was in full flow, which put me on edge for a moment. But after a quick recce of the living room through the patio doors, I suspected that all the running water was a permanent thing.

I wished I had my cricket bat.

I kicked at the patio door instead. The glass shook but didn't break. Obviously made from some double-glazed, hard-as-nails substance. At least I hadn't seen Nelson. I could afford to be a bit noisier. So I went back round to the front of the house. The cab was still there. Good. I marched up to the front door and aimed my foot at the lock. Bounced back, almost went on my arse. Tried it again and a vibration went through my leg so hard I had to take a moment to myself. Looked up at the cab driver and he was smiling.

“Enjoying the show?” I said.

He raised his hands and applauded in the car.

Fucker.

I charged at the front door, bounced again and wrecked my shoulder. Lost my temper and started kicking all over the door, finally aimed a kick that prompted the sound of splintering wood. That was the ticket. Spot fucking on. I felt good enough to try it again, so I did, aiming at the same place. Another crack. Then the lock.

It took a solid five minutes for the door to give way. I know that because the cab driver leaned out of the car and shouted my time at me.

I pushed inside the house, the sweat I had immediately cooling on my skin as the air conditioning brushed my face. The living room was deserted. I could hear the gentle hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Kept listening for any other noise. Nothing. If I was wrong about Nelson being out, he was being quiet about it.

First things first, I pushed open the door that led to the basement. Took it easy on the steps going down, hearing the wood creak underfoot. At the bottom, I fumbled for the pull-switch, grabbed it with one shaking hand and yanked hard. A light clicked on, throwing a pool of yellow about five feet, fading fast. The exercise equipment carved harsh shadows against the concrete walls.

“Liam?”

If he was down here, I couldn't see him. More to the point, I couldn't hear him or
smell
him. If he was dead and anywhere in the house, that would have been a major giveaway, air conditioning or no air conditioning.

Of course, he might not have been in the house. Nelson could have taken him somewhere else.

I didn't want to get on that train of thought.

I climbed the steps, took them as carefully as when I'd descended. Still nothing doing upstairs. I walked through to Nelson's bedroom. The uniform was still lying on the bed, but the gun was long gone. Checked out the shirt, it had a logo on the right pocket: a golden lion hanging onto the bars of a cage, the words REGAL SECURITY curled above it.

Hadn't had a job-type job in years, my arse. Suppose it was a fancy dress costume I was looking at. And that fucking gun wasn't real with real fucking bullets.

I went over to the closet thinking, if he had anything to hide, it'd be in there. I slid the door across, came face to face with more uniform shirts. Some of them were Regal Security, others with different logos, different company names. A few casual shirts, a couple of pairs of casual trousers, but nothing like the amount a guy normally had. This was a bloke used to wearing a uniform, spent most of his life at work. This wasn't someone who used to be in the fight game, not as far as I could see. At the bottom of the closet, a pile of trainers, some more formal but scuffed shoes. And next to the pile, shoe boxes, stacked one on top of the other. I bent down, grabbed one of the boxes and flipped off the lid.

Nelson Byrne was divorced. This is what he told me. He'd also said it wasn't a sad story.

The photos in the shoe box said different. There were loads of them. Photos of Nelson, grinning and bearded. Then a moustache. Then clean-shaven, but haggard. The glasses appeared in all of the pictures, different frames in each until I found a clutch of photos that shared the same pair. Nelson standing with a pretty brunette. Her smile shone from the photo; his seemed forced. There they were, holding up a hot dog in a
Lady And The Tramp
pose. Behind them, I could make out the front of Skooby's.

You really know how to show a girl a good time, Nelson.

But something else I'd noticed, I had to double check.

Yeah. Nelson Byrne was a chubby bastard at one point. Check the next set, and he'd lost a little weight but not much. Had that puffy face of an inveterate drinker. I knew that face only too well — seen it enough in my bathroom mirror.

“If you were pro, Nelson, where's the fuckin' proof?” I said.

Because there should have been something. Boxers were just like everyone else. They got their name in the paper, they'd cut it out. A good review would be framed. And even betting that Nelson was modest — which he wasn't or he wouldn't have mentioned his pro status — where was the proof?

All I saw was a divorced guy who couldn't let go of the past. And someone I'd trusted to look after a kid.

A sound, like a creak.

I turned, listened hard. Put the box on the bed carefully and crept to the door.

There it was again.

Through the kitchen, and the creak got louder. I stopped in front of a closed door at the back of the house. I didn't want to open it. Felt my gut tighten, wanted to puke badly. Knowing there was something behind the door that I didn't want to see, but had to.

I pushed down on the handle, opened the door.

And there was Liam, the bribe sitting on the table next to him.

Silence in the interview room. Wallace looks at the floor. Across from me, Munroe has steepled his fingers.

“You didn't check the guy's credentials?” says Wallace.

“Whose, Nelson's?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I didn't feel the need.”

“When you talked to Mr Byrne in the bar, when you first met him, did you mention boxing first?” says Munroe.

“Anyone in their right mind would have checked his credentials,” says Wallace. “It's the first thing you do. At least
Google
him or something.”

I hold my hands up. “I didn't know the guy from Adam.”

“You hadn't heard of him,” says Wallace.

“I'm not a fight fan.”

“You know how to use a computer, don't you?”

The cop's got a point. A quick search would've turned up nothing on Nelson Byrne.

“Mr Innes, would you answer the question?” says Munroe.

“What question?”

“When you first met Mr Byrne, who instigated the conversation about the amateur competition?”

“I don't know,” I say. “How the fuck am I supposed to remember that?”

“Calm down,” says Wallace.

“I am calm. Obviously the guy was a fuckin' con man or …
deluded
or something because he wasn't who he said he was. I think that's a fact now, yeah? I mean, we've got that particular fact nailed down, Detective Munroe?”

“Yes.”

“So there's no need for me to answer that daft fuckin' question.”

“You broke into Mr Byrne's house,” says Wallace, moving from the wall. He's heading for me. “You want to tell us about that?”

“I told you about that,” I say.

“You went in through the front door. Seems like an odd way of breaking into someone's house.”

“You want to get the cab driver in here to corroborate?” I say. “And I think I had a bloody good reason for doing it, don't you?”

“We're not here to judge,” says Wallace.

“Course you're not.”

Munroe taps on the pad, leans back in his chair, his chin up. “And then you found Liam, that's correct?”

“Yeah, that's correct.”

I found Liam on a single bed. He was fully clothed. Looked like the same clothes as the day before, but I couldn't be sure. He was coming out of something that resembled a deep sleep, but he let out the groggy moan of a lad either drunk out of his mind or on a severe downer. I talked to him, said his name, tried to pull him out of it. When that didn't work, I dragged the lad out of bed and shook the fucker till he sat up. His head lolled on his shoulders, eyes half-closed, the whites visible.

“Liam, we've got to go, son,” I said.

He didn't seem to hear me.

“Snap out of it, man. C'mon.” I kept talking to stave off the panic that I knew would be coming up the pike. “C'mon, Liam, snap out of it. Snap out of it. Get up, man.”

And there it was, creeping in.

“What we're going to do, Liam, we're going to get up, we're going to walk outside, we're going to get into a cab and we're going back to the hotel.”

What the fuck was I thinking, a hotel? A
hospital
. The kid was drugged. If it'd been booze, I'd have smelled it. No, this was a whole prescription of something fucking serious.

I threw Liam's arm over my shoulder, wrapped my arms under his ribs and tried to stand up with him. Grabbed the money from the bedside table — I'd need it for the cab ride back. The lad was stringy, but he was a dead weight, not the easiest thing in the world to drag to the door. I had to adjust my grip, kept my mantra going, kept talking to him even though it was more for my benefit. “Going to get you to a hospital, Liam. Going to get you out of here.”