Authors: A. Garrett D.
Bug pins Marta against the wall and shoves his face into hers.
Her muscles jump and twitch; she has no control over them. Sol must have called him from the car. Her ear throbs from the bite, and darkness pulses behind her eyes, threatening to overwhelm her.
‘Where’s the gear?’
His eyes remind her of the brown clay in her mother’s garden, but the colour shifts constantly and she sees flashes of something dangerous, like lightning in a dust cloud. She can’t hold his gaze. ‘It’s in m-my …’
‘Speak the fuck up!’ He slams the wall with the palm of his hand and she feels the vibrations through her body.
‘My bag. It’s … it’s in my bag.’
He lets go of her and snatches the bag from her hand. He is wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His arms are lean, the muscles under the skin twisted together like steel cables. His upper arms are a mess of blurred prison tattoos – crosses and spiderwebs – but on his right forearm he has a crisply rendered image in black and red – an executioner with an axe slung over one shoulder. The blade drips blood at the executioner’s feet and a grotesque bug feeds on the blood.
She presses herself against the wall, and he unzips the centre compartment and thrusts the handbag back into her hands.
‘Come on then.’
‘I … I don’t understand.’
‘Well, I’m not gonna root round in a tart’s handbag, am I? What the fuck you take me for?’
Marta forces down a wild urge to laugh.
Men really are crazy
. She fumbles in her handbag, spilling tissues, lipstick, keys onto the grey floorboards, and finally brings out the briquette.
He takes it from her. ‘About fucking time. Been waiting for this since yesterday.’
‘Police are everywhere,’ she says.
‘Don’t need to tell me. Fucking dibbles.’ But he’s almost forgotten her. He carries the block of powder away, holding it in both hands, as if he’s afraid to drop it.
Marta realizes for the first time that they are not alone. Three women – two young, one middle-aged – are seated around a long glass table; all wear dust masks. Next to the middle-aged woman is an electronic kitchen scale. None of them look at her, and their silence feels like an interrupted argument.
One of the women is tearing strips of paper and cutting them into squares, ready to make the bindles, another is breaking open capsules – some orange and white, some brown and grey – and pouring the white powder from them into a growing pile. The empty shells lie scattered around her chair, like the empty cockroach egg-cases. There are two windows, both closed. The room is overheated and the air smells sharp – slightly acrid – like burnt matches.
Bug jerks his chin and the middle-aged woman stands and takes the block from him. ‘Stick to the recipe, yeah?’ he says.
She nods, shifting her gaze from the drugs in her hands to Marta for the briefest instant. Then she returns to the table, places the briquette down carefully, and picks up a craft knife.
Bug paces to the window and stands watch there.
The women hunch over their work, avoiding eye contact; to Marta it seems that the walls echo with this man’s rage, and she feels their lack of spirit beginning to infect her.
She speaks loudly, deliberately, into the silence: ‘I go now.’
The one who is shelling the capsules convulses with shock, drops a pill into the mound of powder and shoots a look at Bug to see if he has noticed.
Bug remains at the window, arms folded, looking down into the street. He doesn’t reply and Marta draws back the first door bolt.
‘Touch the next one, I’ll break your arm.’ He doesn’t move, doesn’t even look at her, but Marta lets her hand fall.
‘You might as well make yourself comfortable.’ He tilts his head to indicate a sagging blue sofa at the far end of the room. ‘Bathroom’s through the door to your right.’
Marta doesn’t move.
He shrugs. ‘Please yourself. But you’ll never get all three of them bolts open before I get to you.’
Three more bolts. Even if she did get them open and out of the door, she would have to make it down the fire escape, out through the back gate, down the alley, forty yards or more to the street; she wouldn’t stand a chance. But Sol wouldn’t kill her for saying one stupid thing, would he? No – even Frank wouldn’t do that. Her scalp prickles, thinking of other things – unsaid things, secret things – that would get her killed for sure, if they knew. But she has been so careful – how could they know? She checks the bathroom and discovers it has no window, drifts past the bedroom door and sees bars bolted to the inside of the window frame.
Sol’s words come back to her; he said he could buy anyone’s loyalty, it was only a matter of finding the right price. Bug Nelson continues staring down at the street, the women go about cutting and mixing and bagging the deals, and a black, terrifying thought lodges itself in Marta’s mind. That if she disappears, she has told so many lies no one will know where to look for her. She is invisible. Already gone.
11
‘We want to make sure the thing you’re looking for is on Google 100 per cent of the time.’
ERIC SCHMIDT
The girl in the picture has dark brown hair, grey eyes, like her mother’s. Her face has lost its childish roundness, the dimple in the left cheek; her nose is longer and narrower than in the earlier versions, her hair a shade or two darker. The mouth is fuller, but it still has a slight upturn, a readiness to smile.
The door flew open and the papers stacked on Fennimore’s desk lifted and settled again like birds rudely flustered.
‘Nick, I think I’ve found something.’ It was Josh Brown.
Fennimore’s desk was placed at ninety degrees to the window so that he could look out at the crossroads and gain the widest view of sky. It was 2 p.m., and the sun was already low, bathing his office in pink light. He turned to give the student his attention but Josh looked past him, staring at his laptop monitor.
‘Are you on Photoshop?’ Josh asked.
Fennimore swivelled to face the screen again and reached for the mouse.
‘Wait a minute,’ Josh said, coming further into the room and leaning over him to get a better look. ‘Are you using age-progression software?’ He snapped upright. ‘Oh, shit, sorry – is that your daughter?’
Fennimore closed the screen carefully and swung round in his chair to face the student. ‘What the hell do you know about my daughter?’
‘Nothing. I don’t know anything.’
Fennimore stared into Josh Brown’s face, and felt adrenaline rip through him so fast his fingertips burned.
The student held up his hands. In his left, he carried a bundle of papers, in his right a laptop. ‘I swear, I wasn’t snooping. I was trawling for your research publications.’
‘What’s wrong with using Athens, like everybody else?’
‘I did.’ His eyes kept darting away. ‘But there was a two-year gap, and I wondered why. Look, what can I say? It’s all over the web. Google Professor Nick Fennimore, you get a hell of a lot more than an academic CV.’
Fennimore was sharply aware of what Josh Brown had been too diplomatic to say: Google Nick Fennimore, you get ‘disappearance’ and ‘kidnap’ and ‘murder’.
‘So, Google Josh Brown, what do you get?’
Josh shrugged. ‘A couple of actors, a kicker with the St Louis Rams, a born-again rock star. I’m not there, Professor. Like I told the Chief Inspector – I haven’t got a web profile, and I don’t want one.’ The hot, itchy embarrassment was gone from his eyes, replaced by something unfamiliar. Anxiety, perhaps.
‘Yes, I remember you said that, and you do seem to go out of your way not to be noticed – yet you work like a man out to make a name for himself.’ Fennimore stared hard at the student. ‘You’re just a bundle of contradictions wrapped in a conundrum, aren’t you, Josh?’
‘Look,’ Josh said. ‘I’m sorry I barged in like that. I’m sorry if you think I’ve been digging around in stuff that’s none of my business. I didn’t mean to invade your privacy, and I didn’t mean to offend you.’
Seeing the student’s pained expression, Fennimore realized he was being overbearing. What if Josh
had
done a little internet research – wouldn’t it be hypocritical to condemn exactly the kind of curiosity he encouraged in his students? Especially when half the undergraduates did exactly the same. Some of the brighter girls even asked shyly if there was any news, delicately avoiding any specifics of the news they were enquiring about. He shrugged, irritated with himself.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘What’ve you found?’
The relief on the younger man’s face was palpable. ‘A pattern in the post-mortem results.’ He stopped. ‘I mean a possible pattern.’ Then, frowning, he said, ‘No, I mean an actual pattern, but with a possible explanation.’
‘Let’s see it.’
While Josh was occupied laying out the folders, Fennimore reopened his laptop. The digital image he had been working from occupied the bottom right quarter of the screen – a face that was recognized across Europe – Fennimore’s daughter at the age of ten. He had taken it himself, five years earlier, just four days before Suzie vanished. His little girl would be almost a woman now. He saved the image and minimized the screen.
12
Kate Simms was about to start re-interviewing witnesses to the drugs deaths. In response to her request for more officers, her superintendent had allocated a detective sergeant and one newly promoted detective constable. DC Moran had six years of street policing experience, most recently in Cheetham Hill, and had already tracked down two more witnesses through her contacts in the area.
Moran had sad, gentle eyes and a round face, framed by fine brown hair. The lads called her Mouse, but Kate Simms had seen her file, and she knew that DC Moran’s appearance had nothing to do with the person within. They agreed that Moran would take the lead in the first interview, with an addict who had witnessed the death of her sister.
Jordan Fitch was shivering, and her nose dripped like a broken tap. DC Moran handed her a tissue and a cup of hot sweet tea.
‘I’m really sorry what happened to your Jade,’ she said, unwrapping a chocolate bar and placing it between them, as if they were a couple of mates out for a cuppa and a bit of a consoling chat.
Jordan warmed her hands around the paper cup. ‘Jade wasn’t even into it that much.’ Her body twitched as if some invisible tormentor prodded and pinched her ribs, her back, her face. ‘She was more into coke, a bit of weed. She had a good job, you know, in this nice restaurant in the city centre, so she didn’t have
time
to get high, you know, regular.’
‘So what happened, you know, when it happened?’ Moran asked, falling easily into Jordan’s rhythm of speech.
Jordan shivered so violently the tea in her cup slopped over the sides. ‘Oh, shit, I’m rattling,’ she said. ‘I’m just rattling, you know?’ Kate Simms stirred, but didn’t interfere: DC Moran was the expert in this situation.
‘I know,’ Moran said, touching the woman’s hand lightly. ‘We’ll get you sorted as quick as possible, after we’re finished here, yeah?’
Jordan took a fresh tissue, wiped her nose, balled it up and clamped her hands around the cup again. ‘Losing her like that was horrible.’ Her body twitched. ‘I seen people die before – my feller died of an overdose, but he kind of drifted off, you know?’ She looked into DC Moran’s face. ‘He were
peaceful
. But Jade … It was horrible. No, it was …’ She groped for the right word. ‘It was
ugly
. And my little sister wasn’t ugly.’ She stared fiercely into Moran’s face. ‘She
wasn’t
.’
‘
Course
she wasn’t,’ Moran said gently. She waited a few seconds, and when Jordan was calmer, she said, ‘Jordan, I know it’s awful talking about it, but we really do need to know.’
They had her witness statement but it was brief and unhelpful.
‘I’m not
well
,’ Jordan appealed to Simms. ‘I’m really sick.’
‘I know you want to help your sister,’ Moran persisted in that same quiet, coaxing manner.
‘I do. I
do
, I want to help, but …’ Jordan wrapped her arms around her stomach and began to rock. After a time she wiped her face and nose on the sleeve of her jacket, clenched her hands into fists and forced them onto the table.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘For Jade … I’d bought a few wraps off—’ She checked herself. ‘Off a street corner. We shared a flat, see, and I was in the bedroom getting … you know … fixed up, and she bounced in all happy ’cos she’d got the evening off. She wanted me to sell her a wrap, and I had a few spare, so I said okay.’
‘Was there anything odd about the deal when you were cooking it up?’ Moran said.
Jordan shook her head. ‘It were a normal – if there was owt wrong with it, I swear I would of stopped her. Anyway, I’m quicker than her, ’cos she’s not really used to it, so by the time she’s injected, I’m already high. Suddenly, she starts gasping like she can’t catch her breath. And she looks at me. Like she wants me to help. But I can’t – it’s like a dream and I can’t do nothing, you know? Like one of them dreams where you’re trying to run and you can’t?’
DC Moran nodded, sympathizing.
‘No!’ Jordan banged so hard on the table that the tea cup skittered sideways. ‘Stop it. Stop
doing
that. Stop being so fucking
nice
to me.’ She began to cry, and two red spots bloomed on her cheekbones, as if her tears burned her skin. ‘You know I’m fucking lying.’ She gave a hiccuping sob and covered her mouth.
Simms glanced across, and Moran lifted one finger, a signal that she should wait. Jordan tore a bundle of fresh tissues from the box, blew her nose and sat up straight.
‘I was mellow, you know?’ She avoided their gaze as she spoke, frowning instead at the tissues balled in her fists. ‘
I
was fine, so in my head I knew nothing was really wrong. Truth is, I was feeling too fucking
good
to be bothered.’ Her mouth twisted into a sneer of self-hatred. ‘I couldn’t be
arsed
to help my little sister when she was choking to death ’cos
I
was feeling fine.’