Dead Money, page 16
"Yes."
He stood and extended one large, scuffed hand. His handshake made me want to puke, his palm more callus than skin. He looked into my eyes, like he could see right through me. A cheap trick, but it was a cheap trick that made my stomach ache. I let go first and took a seat.
Hart came back in with the coffee in a cardboard tray. He put it down in the middle of the table, took a fistful of milk and sugar out of his pocket and dumped it next to the cups. "Help yourself."
Donkin did. Hopley didn't. I stayed where I was.
Hopley glanced at his watch. "Shall we crack on, gentlemen?"
"Absolutely." Hart reached over and pressed record, then stated the time and date for the benefit of the tape. Donkin stared at me.
It didn't matter. They had nothing on me.
"Can I smoke?"
Hart shook his head. "Non-smoking station."
Hopley looked at me. "I'd like to request we keep this brief. As you can see, my client isn't exactly in a fit state for a long interview."
"But he's a captive audience." Donkin smiled. "You're a difficult man to pin down."
"Also, there's the matter of his health."
"What's the matter with him?"
"It's my gut."
"What's the matter with it?"
"It's not right."
Donkin waved it off. "A bad pint isn't a health problem."
I rubbed my side. The ache had turned to a slightly more stabbing pain. "It's indigestion, mostly. I just need some Rennies and I'll be fine."
"Then we'll crack on." Hart smiled at me. "Sooner we get this finished, the sooner you can get cleaned up and on your way."
I smiled back. I didn't manage much of one. The pain was getting worse.
"What was it you wanted to ask me about?"
"Leslie Beale."
"What about him?"
Donkin watched me, still leaned back in his chair. "The kicking he got."
Time to start my pitch. I buckled a smile. "I had nothing to do with that."
Hart frowned. "But you were aware of it."
"Of course I was. It was all they could talk about at the office."
"So you knew we wanted to speak to you."
"I thought you'd come to me on your own time if it was important enough. I have to earn a living, you know."
"Appreciate that." Donkin tapped a pencil against his pad. The end of the pencil was pocked with chew marks. "Appreciate you're a busy man, Mr Slater. But there's busy and then there's avoiding us."
"I don't know what you mean." My gut twitched. I breathed through my nose.
Hart remained placid. "You threatened Mr Beale, didn't you?"
"Sorry?"
He referred to his notes. "The Commercial Inn, last Thursday, apparently there was some kind of disagreement—"
"That's all it was."
"And you threatened to kill him?"
I looked at Hopley. He looked straight ahead. I was on my own. I felt sick, but it was okay. I could ride this.
"Why did you do that, Mr Slater?" Hart seemed genuinely interested; there wasn't the hint of accusation in his voice.
"You never got angry enough to threaten to kill someone? You don't mean it, but you say it anyway?"
Donkin stretched out. "Can't say I have."
"There was a disagreement." I looked at Donkin first to ram the point home, then Hart. The ache in my stomach shifted, threw me off-balance. "It was a small disagreement, but it was a final straw. If you've done your job you'll know that Les Beale isn't exactly averse to threatening people himself. He's got a rep in most of the clubs in Manchester."
Donkin tapped the pad again. "We're aware of Mr Beale's reputation."
"The Palace, right? That's just one of many. And I'll be honest with you, I just got sick of the bans and the booze. My wife'll tell you, we've had a rough patch recently and that's in no small part to the amount of time I've spent with Beale. So I told him I was going to spend more time with my missus, and he said something about her that I didn't like, and I suppose I lost the plot a bit. Doesn't mean I'm capable of beating him into the ICU, does it?"
There was silence. The two coppers mulling it over or indulging in a spot of telepathy. Donkin's features creased into an exaggerated frown. Practised and insincere. He leaned forward and spoke with a voice that belonged in a quarry. "Mr Beale passed away last night."
I stared into his bloodshot eyes and began to tremble. I wanted to say what, what did you say, but I knew what he'd said. It just didn't want to sink in, bobbing around in my mind like a cork. "I didn't ..."
My chest hurt. My heart banged in my ears.
My lips were dry. "I didn't do anything."
My midriff felt bloated. Something crackled inside. The pain building into an electric dance along the pit of my stomach that doubled me up. I gripped the table, my knuckles white.
"Mr Slater?" Hopley pushed back his seat.
"I didn't do it." My breath came short and ragged. I couldn't open my eyes. Felt like my gut was trying to drown itself in acid.
If I told them about Ahmad, then I told them about the debt. If I told them about the debt, then I told them about the poker game. And if I told them about that, it was all about Stevie, and I couldn't see a way around it, not when it felt like I was burning up inside. I felt the chair slip away from under my arse and I tried to steady myself on the table, but I ended up on the floor. My fingers slid from the table. I heard the coppers stand, the table scream across the floor.
"Mr Slater?"
I didn't know who that was. I didn't recognise the voice. I opened my mouth. The breath stuck in my throat and the room became narrow.
I'm going to explode. Something in me. I don't know. I need help. Someone help.
Somewhere, an alarm sounded. It turned into Stevie, giggling wildly then distorted into feedback. I couldn't feel my hands. Then I couldn't feel my limbs, then everything. The only thing I felt was the pain that had gripped my gut and twisted it in knots. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything but the strained whistle of my own breath.
29
"You're a lucky man, Mr Slater."
The doctor was balding and no amount of pomade and careful combing would ever hide that. His chest stuck out against the white of his jacket. Through my blurred vision, he looked like an angry pigeon.
I knew I wouldn't like him. But I didn't say anything. He'd saved my life after all.
And I was a lucky man.
I could have died. The ulcers which had been swelling and throbbing in my stomach lining didn't exactly get along with the antacids. Turned out my stomach had been over-compensating for their alkaline nature by producing a load more acid, and when that happened it was only a matter of time before the word haemorrhage turned up in conversation. Which was why I was lucky. I could have bled out. I could have died.
But I didn't. I was hooked up to a drip and still in considerable pain, but I was alive, so I should be thankful for the small mercies.
If I didn't know better, I could've sworn that Hart and Donkin took my spill personally. They came by when I was able to talk and Hart in particular seemed mortified that the interview had ended up in a hospitalisation. Donkin didn't seem to mind so much – sure enough, one look at him told me that plenty of his interviews had ended up with a suspect rushed away in an ambulance.
Which brought me to the second reason I was a lucky guy. Beale died before he got a chance to say anything about Stevie. And, according to Hart, the CCTV footage of the Riverside car park had shown a group of men setting upon Beale with a vengeance, because that was exactly what it'd been.
Chinese. Four of them. Well, five, but the fifth lad took a back seat, his face busted up and about a yard of butterfly stitching from his eyebrow to the edge of his jaw, which stuck out at an odd angle and would do for the rest of his life unless he had corrective surgery. His left arm hung in a sling under his designer jacket. They'd marked Beale's car on George Street.
Donkin looked at me. "They thought they knew him, but they needed the injured boy to confirm it."
And of course Beale wouldn't stay out of the Riverside for long. After they'd marked his car, the Riverside was about the only place in Manchester he wasn't banned from, so he had to take the chance. And when they noticed the keyed car outside the casino, the lads waited for him. And when he came out, half-pissed and broke, they took the opportunity to beat the shit out of him until his heart gave out.
That was the way Donkin told it, anyway. I doubted Beale went without a fight. It was just like him to think he could do four-on-one. I didn't blame him. I was all ready to do something similar at Lucy's place.
Donkin and Hart stayed long enough for me to confirm that it hadn't been them that put me in the hospital, and that they'd had to double-check my relationship with the Chinese lads after my outburst in the Commerical. It was my own fault for losing my rag with him. But after that, it was over. No mention of Stevie. No mention of Ahmad. A few days later, Stevie was out of the news. I began to think I'd dodged a bullet.
There was one bullet I couldn't dodge, though. Eric came to see me after the police and told me that Jimmy was moving to get me sacked. When I asked why, Eric smiled. "MacReady?"
Oh yeah. I'd forgotten about him. Apparently nutting a potential customer went against some unwritten rule of salesmanship. I didn't mind. Double-glazing was a loser's racket anyway. I would find another job, something with a little less pressure, just to keep healthy. And yet again, Eric left with a load off his shoulders. All the shit I'd put him through with having to deliver bad news, I was beginning to like the bloke. Pity I wouldn't see him again.
And then, on the last day, I woke up to see a female figure standing at the end of the bed. I was still sedated and half-asleep and the first name that came to mind was: "Lucy?"
"No, Alan. It's Cath."
I pushed myself upright and blinked her into view. She looked different. She looked younger, healthier. I wondered how long I'd been in the hospital, and then how long it had been since I'd see her last. Her face was smooth, her hair pulled back and up, made her look like a Hitchcock blonde. She was beautiful.
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm okay."
"That's good."
"Sit down if you want."
"I'm not staying."
"Right." I nodded. "It's a work day."
"I just thought I'd come and see how you were. I have something to say, Alan." Her nostrils flared. There was a blush coming to her cheeks. Whatever it meant, it wasn't good.
"So do I."
"Please—"
"No, really, let me go first."
I had to mend all this. The past couple of weeks, maybe before that. I needed to fix it so it wouldn't happen again. I'd learned my lesson. I was ready to go through the steps. I was ready to apologise. I was ready to apologise often. I was ready to provide support and assurance, be present in the relationship, let her call the shots and call me shit for as long as she needed to. This was a reminder of the vows I took on the day we married, I'd say, and I would promise never to renege on those vows ever again. It would be simple. I would fall on my sword and with a little time she'd come to forgive me, because she wouldn't have much choice. She didn't want a divorce any more than I did.
I would have said all that were it not for her interrupting before I could draw a big enough breath.
"I want a divorce."
I didn't say anything. My tongue felt too large for my mouth. We sat in silence for longer than Cath found comfortable.
"Did you hear me?"
I nodded. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"Lucy. The lying. The gambling. The drinking. I'm sorry for all of it. I'll change, Cath, I promise."
She watched me and we fell into a thick silence again. Whatever I'd said, I hadn't scratched the surface. And then I remembered. The call from the payphone. The tears. I didn't remember what I'd said, but I got the sick, churning feeling that I'd spilled my guts. She was implacable because she already knew everything there was to know and, despite the tremble that wriggled under my skin like the contents of a bait box, I smiled at her. I tried to make it the most pleasant sign-right-here closing smile, but it felt alien on my face and the reaction it got suggested it looked that way too.
"You're beautiful, you know that?"
The colour rose again. "I know what you did."
"I was pissed on the phone, Cath. Can't take that as gospel."
"I know. All you did on the phone was apologise and cry. I'm not talking about that." She pulled out a copy of the Manchester Evening News from a couple of days ago and tossed it onto the bed. It was already folded to the page she wanted me to read.
It wasn't Stevie that had alerted the police, it was the dog. Or rather, the dog's smell as it decomposed under that bush. Some twitchy old bitch with trembling nets had seen a man dump something down by the canal with another man. She thought it was fly-tipping – there'd been so much of it lately – that she called the council out. And when they got to looking, that was when Stevie decided to bob up to the surface. They thought he was a bunch of old rubbish when he nudged the bank. Got a right shock.
"You hit the dog. You dumped it."
"Good job, too. Or else it looks like they wouldn't have found that body."
"You put that there, too."
I looked at her. Deny, deny, deny.
"You smelled like bleach when you got in that one night. And then there's the smell in the car. I thought it was just me—"
"It was the dog. I told you."
"No, I knew the dog smell. It was something else the second time."
I watched her. She stood rigid. She was frightened of me. I nodded. "Well, I'm sure you think you know—"
"I don't have any proof, Alan. And I'm not going to go looking for any. Whatever you did, you're going to have to live with it. But you're not living with me." She pulled out some paperwork and a pen, tossed them both onto the bed.
"What's this?"
"I need you to sign over the flat so I can put it on the market."
I picked up the pen and tapped the paperwork. "You don't have to do any of this, Cath."
"If you make this difficult, I can make things difficult for you in return. You sign over the flat, I'll sell it and you'll never see me again."
"Please, Cath—"
"Don't. Don't even pretend you're bothered, Alan. I know you're not. You never were. So just sign and I'll be out of your hair."
Spoken like a true salesman. I signed the documents and pushed them back towards her. When she reached in, I grabbed her wrist and held it tight.
"Don't get any fucking ideas," I said.
She looked at me with eyes like ice until I let her go. She could get all the ideas she wanted. She could call the police right now and they could bring me back in on suspicion and I'd be fucked, because I knew a little tug at one of the loose ends would unravel the whole fucking thing. And for the first time since I'd met her, I was frightened of her.
She gathered up the paperwork and tucked it into her bag. Then she nodded at me once and looked at the bed. She looked as if she was thinking about saying something else, but then obviously decided against it. She nodded again and turned to leave.
"Cath."
She didn't stop, didn't look back. I watched her leave, her arse tight and young in the skirt she was wearing and I heard myself breathing through my nose a little too hard. When she was gone, I watched the ward door for a few minutes more before my eyes lost focus and my thoughts turned on themselves and slowed up to a single white light projected against the blank screen of my mind.
Didn't have a job, didn't have a wife. I'd lost everything.
Didn't matter. I still had this paper. There were classified ads for everything. A flat, a job, a wife. It was all possible. Hope sprang eternal. Positive mental attitude. See, that was something that Beale hadn't possessed. And it was something that marked me out as a fucking winner.
I chuckled to myself. It didn't sound right, but it sounded funny so I laughed. And then the laughter stopped making a sound, turning inwards until I shook, tears running down my face. A tickle started deep down in the chest, spreading wider as I tried to stop myself. And then the tearing, the pain that only made it funnier, like stitches in my stomach pulling and then snapping as I grabbed out for something to touch, something to bring me out of these convulsions of laughing and weeping. And as the pain blossomed into full-blown agony, I gasped and coughed and tried to breathe.
And somewhere outside, I could hear a dog barking over and over again.
But it sounded more like me.
***
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Ray Banks, Dead Money
