Dead Money, page 14
But my heart wasn't in it. I should've blown this out on the phone and moved on. I began to wrap it up, calmly and positively and without the tiniest hope of a Hancock. They hemmed and hawed, made out that the little grey cells in their little grey heads were working overtime, and then they politely turned me down.
I stood. "Well, you have my card. Let me know if you change your mind."
"We certainly will," said Mr Figgis, who held out one hand.
I shook it as loosely as possible, the touch of his leathery skin enough to make my throat close. Then I was out of the door quick-sharp. As I left, I heard the theme tune to Murder, She Wrote.
As I thought, I was just another form of entertainment to these people.
I slumped into the car, turned on the radio and looked for music that wasn't shite. I didn't find it, so I switched it off again and hit the road.
MacReady was a bust from the get-go. By the time I got there, the skies had opened and the roads were slick with rain. I jogged to the front door of what looked like an ex-council house and leaned on a mute doorbell before knocking.
A huge bloke shambled to the door. He was wearing a T shirt and boxers and looked as if he'd just woken up. Night shift or on the dole. I hoped it was the former. A tougher sale was still a sale.
"Mr MacReady?" I asked, digging into my jacket for a card.
He looked at my sample case, beady black eyes under a thick monobrow. Pushed his lips out and said, "I'm about to get my tea," like that explained everything.
"I'm from Warmsafe." I tried to find my best smile, but had to make do with my second best instead.
"Warmsafe?" He turned to an invisible wife somewhere behind him and yelled at her, asking if she'd heard of Warmsafe.
"You what?" she shouted.
"Warmsafe."
"Who?"
"Double glazing," I said.
"You what?" said the bloke. "Having a laugh, aren't you?" He nodded at something behind me. I turned to see a van, on the side of it, in big writing: MACREADY JOINERY. And underneath, his phone number.
MacReady slammed the door shut. I stood on his step for a little while longer, shaking. Bastard's a joiner and some canvasser thought he could bump his lead volume with a quick blag.
I wiped the rain from my face and headed back to the car. On the way I stopped at MacReady's van. A large smiley face stared back at me.
This didn't happen to me. I didn't get the blag leads. I didn't get only the blag leads, anyway. I was the guy who brought in a couple of decent commissions a week, and then maybe a couple more after that. I was a good, solid salesman, I made volume. The blags were for Eric. They were for Beale. They were for the men caught in the slow swirl of failure that would ultimately drag them down the drain, the men who'd grown blind to their own failure and who didn't know that it had already ended for them.
I wasn't them. I wasn't Beale. And no amount of shitty leads would put me in his position.
I slammed a fist into the smiley face. Then another. I heard myself screaming as I did it again. The sound was tremendous. I backed up, my ears ringing and the pain just starting to pulse in my scuffed knuckles.
"Fuck d'you think you're doing?"
MacReady, still in his skivvies, except now he'd thrown a coat over his shoulders and some slippers on his feet. I could smell something hot and vaguely sweaty following him from the open doorway.
"What does it look like?"
"What's your name?"
"Why?"
"I'm fuckin' reporting you, that's why. Criminal damage."
"I didn't touch your van." I sniffed and tossed my sample case into the back seat of my car.
"You did. I saw you."
I smiled at him and shrugged. "I don't know what you think you saw, but I didn't lay a finger on your van."
He squared his shoulders. Pointed. "You put a big fuckin' dent in it."
I shook my head. "That was you. I didn't do anything. You're obviously deluded."
"You're going to pay for that."
"I'm paying for nothing."
He blocked my way to the driver's side. We stood there for a little while, getting wet. He jammed a big, square finger into the middle of my chest. "You're paying for the fuckin' damage, son. And I'll have your fuckin' name an' all, because I'm going to report you."
"You're going to report me, are you?" I said, smiling.
"To your gaffer. You're Warmsafe."
"That's right."
"So it shouldn't be too fuckin' difficult to have your job."
I felt my smile stretch until it hurt. "You'd do that? Really?"
A glint in his eye. He nodded.
I joined him in the nodding until he stopped. I kept going. I looked at the pavement and took a deep breath. Then I looked up at him again, still smiling. "You're more than welcome to send our customer service team a formal complaint in writing. But just in case you had any second thoughts ..."
"I don't have any—"
My forehead connected sharply with his nose, and I felt something crunch. MacReady twisted away from me. His hands clamped to his face. I shoved him out of the way, and he stumbled forwards a few steps until the dizziness kicked him to his knees. He was making coughing noises. Blood streamed through the gaps in his fingers.
I got in behind the wheel, slammed the door shut. I watched him struggle to his feet and then drop again. He was shouting something to his wife, who hadn't shown up yet. My guess was she was still in the kitchen. If she couldn't hear him at the front door, there was no way she'd be able to hear him screaming outside. I hummed down the window, smug in the knowledge that electric windows were science fiction to this fucking ape. "Mr MacReady, if you've quite finished bawling ..."
He turned my way, looked at me with swelling eyes.
"You wanted my name. It's James Henderson. I'm Warmsafe's sales manager."
He frowned.
"And the next time you don't want one of our representatives to call, Mr MacReady, you should really let us know in advance. That way, we're not wasting our time, okay?" I winked. "Brilliant. Cheerio, then."
I leaned on the accelerator. MacReady jumped back from the kerb. I saw him in the rear view trying to remember my number plate.
Fuck him. And fuck Jimmy Henderson. Fuck the lot of them. I was king of the world.
It was short-lived.
All it took was the phone call from Cath to make me feel less than fucking regal. Not because she was in tears. Not because she was hysterical. But because she was frightened in a way I'd never heard before. Which meant Ahmad knew where we lived.
"Stay where you are," I said. "I'm coming home."
25
I arrived back at the flat to see Cath stood in the middle of the living room holding Buttons. She was shaken and trembling, and so was the dog. The place had been trashed. There was broken glass on the floor, and dirt from the plants had been ground into the rug by the fireplace. The television was gone, torn from the wall, and shortly after I noticed that, I noticed the rest of the electronics were gone, too.
I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn't. I lit a Regal instead. Couldn't stop looking around at the carnage. If I didn't believe Ahmad had arranged for Beale's kicking before, I sure as hell believed it now. Question was, how did he get my address? What, was he following me now? I remembered Asian blokes watching us this past weekend, but I didn't figure on them tailing us home. At the time, I hadn't reckoned on them being anything other than Asian blokes.
Cath moved to the sofa and sank down into it. As soon as Buttons saw the chance, he wriggled and jumped from her grasp, skittering across the floor. She shouted after him. "Oh God, mind his paws!"
"Leave him. What happened, Cath?"
"He'll get glass in his paws, Alan."
"Fuck his paws," I shouted. "Look at me, what happened?"
She looked up at me. Her eyes were pink from crying, her hands now knotted in her lap. She looked old and weak, reminded me how old and weak I was, and I hated her for it. When she spoke, I saw her bottom teeth. They were small and thin and the gum was receding from them as if it couldn't bear to be near. I shook the thought. She was telling me something. I had to listen.
" ... and they didn't say who they were, Alan. I asked them, I asked them a hundred times, but it was like I wasn't there. They just barged in, started making a mess." She looked around her, taking it in as if for the first time, and she showed more of her bottom teeth. "They took the television."
"I noticed."
"I tried to stop them."
I doubted it. Probably took one look at them and spent the rest of the time screaming at them from across the room.
She started crying. "They took my jewellery."
Anything of value. Figured. This was a down payment. All the fuss she would've made, she was lucky she hadn't ended up like Beale.
I finished the Regal, ground it in an ashtray and lit another one as I went through to the bedroom. They'd ransacked the room, looked like they'd taken great pleasure in upending the mattress, pulling out drawers and chucking them across the room. I blew smoke, felt a tremor in my hand. This wasn't going to end well. After the Paki comment, I didn't think I could win Ahmad round with my sparkling personality, and I got the feeling that he was looking to recover his money as messily as possible.
My forehead ached. I rubbed it.
I smelled Cath's perfume as she sidled up behind me. She put her hand on my arm. I didn't move. She wanted comforting. I wasn't in a fit state to give it, nor did I particularly want to, but I did. She shook in my arms and I stared at the wall behind her.
"It's okay," I said.
She looked up. "How is it okay?"
"It'll be fine. I'll sort it out."
She wiped her face. "Yes, we should call the police." I held her fast. She tried to move, then looked back at me. "Alan, get off. You're hurting me."
I paused. I didn't want to let her go. But she was getting more and more flustered, so I had to. She adjusted her clothing and I tried to paper the cracks in my voice before I spoke. "We don't need the police."
"Do you know who did this?"
I didn't answer.
"We've just been robbed." Her voice hitting a pitch that made my eyes ache. "We need to report it."
"No, we don't."
She shook her head and made for the living room. "For the insurance ..."
"What did I tell you?" I said, and followed. "Wait a second."
She had her hand on the phone. Finished dialling. I heard a voice at the other end. I grabbed the phone out of her hand, slammed it down and hit her as hard as I could. She buckled, tripped, brought the telephone table down with her as she hit the carpet. I stood frozen for a minute, watching her as she pulled herself upright, her face turned away from me.
"I told you." There was a shake in my voice that I cleared out along with my throat. "I said I had it sorted. Listen to me."
She went over to the sofa and sat down. She looked at the floor. One hand was up by her eye, fingers pressed to the socket. She wet her lips and blinked. "They'll come anyway. You hung up on them. They'll have to come."
"Cath, I'm sorry."
"No, you're not." She sniffed, removed her fingers from her face. Her cheek was red. I'd drawn blood with my wedding ring. I adjusted it. "You've been wanting to do that for a long time, Alan. Don't pretend you haven't."
"I haven't. Really."
She looked at me now, her eyes watery. "Why don't you just ask for a divorce? Why don't you be a man about it?"
"Because I don't hate you. I love you."
She shook her head. Stuck out her bottom lip.
I went up to her, got down on my knees. I felt glass grinding through my trouser leg. I didn't touch her – I'd already made a mess of that. Instead, I tried to get eye contact and hold it, the first tool of sincerity. When I had it, she seemed to soften, and I chanced my hand, settling it lightly upon hers. She didn't flinch, barely moved.
"I do love you. I've just been distracted lately. I won't lie to you, it's been tough at work, and I've been trying to escape that with Beale and the clubs and I've been taking it out on you. I didn't mean to. I really didn't. I'm sorry. I won't let it happen again, I promise."
She didn't reply. She didn't move. She was a stone.
"I know who did this," I said.
She looked up then. "Who?"
"You don't know and it's probably best it stays that way. They're not the sort of people you need to know. But phoning the police won't do us any good right now."
"If you know who it was—"
"Cath, listen, calling the police won't help the situation. You need to trust me when I say I'm going to sort this, okay? Do you trust me?"
She regarded me for a long time. The throb in her cheek kept her from saying yes immediately. In fact, I was beginning to think that belting her had scuppered my chances entirely.
"Cath, I need you to trust me, and I need to be able to trust you. I don't want to see you hurt any more than you already are."
Something flashed in her eyes then. The corners nipped in quickly and released. She was blaming me. She had a point. Her voice hardened. "We need to put a claim in on the insurance, Alan. They took my mother's jewellery."
"I need you to stay here for me. I'm going out, I'm going to sort all this out, and I'll be back later on. I might even be able to get the jewellery back, okay? I'll do my best, anyway. And I know we need to call the police to claim, but just do me a favour and wait until I call you to do it, alright? I want to make sure nothing happens to you in the meantime."
Her lips moved, but no sound came out. She rubbed them with the back of her hand.
"Okay?" I said again.
Her resolve cracked, then broke, and she started crying again. The hand that had rubbed her lips went up to her eyes and she appeared to deflate in front of me. I reached up and hugged her, feeling her shudder under me.
"It'll be okay, love. Just leave it to me. It'll be fine."
And for a moment there, I believed it.
26
Closing a bank account was a pain in the arse at the best of times, but when the bitch with the bob-cut behind the desk smelled alcohol on my breath, I entered a whole new world of bureaucratic pain. She needed identification, three pieces of, and one had to be photo ID. I handed them over. She asked me for various passwords I'd set up back when I gave a shit and now, with bourbon swilling around my increasingly painful stomach, I couldn't remember what they were, so I had to give her every single password I'd ever used. I signed a couple of forms I didn't really read, and she compared signatures like they were fingerprints. I wasn't the real deal, obviously. The real deal was sober somewhere, unaware that his identity was being thieved by a smelly-arse drunk.
The sweat wasn't my fault. Banks, doctor surgeries and job centres, they all had the central heating ramped up just enough to slick up your forehead and put stains in your pits. As for the drink, I knew I should've saved the bottle for Lucy, but I needed the boost. As to the reason I was drinking this hard this early in the afternoon, I didn't want to get into it. I could have said it was the robbery that had put the fear of God into me, but I would've been lying.
The bitch looked up from the paperwork and flashed a smile I'd seen too many times on Henderson's face to return. It disappeared almost as quickly as it'd appeared, and she called over a skinny twelve-year-old who I assumed was the manager. He had a large mole on the side of his neck that kept rubbing against his collar. It made me want to puke. My head was thumping. I popped some Nurofen and then a couple of antacids. They watched me, and I could hear the judgement come down – drunk, drug addict, what was next?
Fuck them. They weren't having the kind of shitty day I was.
They discussed the very complex situation of me wanting to withdraw my own money for a few minutes more, then the manager gave the bitch the nod. Normally they'd try and get me to stay with them, or at least ask why I was taking my business elsewhere. When I asked for the lot in cash, the bitch rightly assumed that the added customer service wasn't necessary. She counted it out for me, all eleven thousand of it. Not a lot, certainly not enough to pay off Beale's debt, but then that wasn't the plan, was it?
I left as quickly as I'd entered, pulled my mobile as the door swung shut behind me. "Lucy, it's Alan. Where are you?"
There was a flustered sound that I'd never heard come out of her before. "Alan?"
"I need to see you."
A pause. "I'm at university."
"Then I'll see you in a few minutes. Whereabouts?"
"No, wait, you can't, remember? Personal space?"
"It's gone a little bit beyond that, Lucy. I need to see you."
"Have you been drinking?"
"No." I got into the car, tugged the seatbelt. "Alright, a little."
"Well, I've got a lecture in about five seconds, so it'll have to be tonight."
I heard a voice in the background. Sounded like Josh, which was odd because he didn't do the same course. And then I noticed how quiet it was at her end.
"Lucy, are you—"
"Alan, sorry, I've got to go. I'll give you a call when I get out, okay?"
And she hung up. I sat and looked at the steering wheel. Didn't know why she was being so cagey all of a sudden. Yes, we'd said we'd cool things off a bit, but then she should've been over the moon to see me, surely?
And then there was Josh. I couldn't shake him. Probably a perfectly innocent explanation, but I couldn't seem to think of it. So I put the car into gear and drove out to Oxford Road.
Thing was, I wanted her to come with. No, needed was more like it. I couldn't do this on my own, because if I tried then my gut would eat me alive, I knew it. I needed someone to tell me what I was doing was okay. And if I went off with Lucy, then it was understandable. She was a good-looking girl, we had a good relationship, so it was only natural that one thing would lead to another and we'd end up skipping town.
And as for Cath, she'd be fine. It wasn't her Ahmad wanted, it was me. I was the one with the debt. And maybe if I was out of the way, he'd go back to Beale. Seemed like we were essentially interchangeable to him anyway. I didn't think he'd hurt a woman. He wasn't an animal. The lads he employed, I wasn't so sure about. They hadn't hurt her when they came in to turn the place over, but that didn't mean they wouldn't do anything once they found out I'd done a runner.
