Blackwater

by Conn Iggulden

  He looked at it in the mirror and I saw how pale he’d gone.

  ‘We should get you to hospital, for stitches,’ I told him. He was still stunned and I didn’t want him to ask why he’d been attacked by a maniac for no reason. I knew it should have been me and I felt enough relief and guilt to be lightheaded.

  When he turned to me, I could see he was raging. I handed him a wad of toilet paper for his neck.

  ‘He could have killed me,’ he said, dabbing at the wound while he stared back at himself in the mirror. ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘He’ll be long gone by now,’ I replied. ‘The bouncers threw him out.’ He shrugged, pulling on his shirt over the pad of tissues. He swore as he saw his trousers had been gashed and that there was more blood staining the cloth.

  ‘He owes me,’ he said.

  I followed him out.

  He should have gone home, that man, whatever his name was. He shouldn’t have been standing at a bus stop only fifty yards from the club. That was his second mistake of the evening, and sometimes just one can get you killed. When he saw my brother stalking towards him, he should have run, he really should. Instead, he just grinned the same soft grin, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  My brother hit him hard enough to put him down, cutting his knuckles on the man’s teeth. Then he kicked him as he lay there, twice before he even curled up. I should have stopped it then. Hell, I should have stopped him leaving the club and just insisted on taking him to hospital. I didn’t, though. I wanted a little revenge as well. I could have been killed that evening. I’m not proud of it, but there was a debt to be paid.

  Another kick to the head and it should have been over, but two more muted thumps kept him down. I couldn’t see the man’s face, and I didn’t want to. I was slow holding my brother back, but in the end, when it was late, I did. I take comfort from that. I am not him, even when I’m full of anger and spite. I am not. He would have kicked that man to death. Maybe he did.

  We left him there on the pavement and I did take my brother to hospital to be stitched and flirted with by a nurse. I read the next day’s papers looking for news of a killing in Camden, near the Underworld club. There was nothing.

  When we met Denis, Carol still drew men in when she was hungry, though she’d learned a few things about keeping them at arm’s length as well. For years I hadn’t had to deal with one of her hangers-on, those peculiar males who would pretend to be a caring colleague or a friend while they waited for her to fall into bed with them. It was usually enough to have a quiet word, just to let them know I knew. I didn’t need help until we met Denis Tanter. Even then it might have been enough to turn a blind eye to a few afternoons in hotels until she had scratched her itch.

  You think the first time is going to kill you, but it just doesn’t. The night is the worst one of your life, but when sleep does come it turns off your imagination. You wake up the next day and she’s there making breakfast and everything is all right again. I could have lived with that, I knew I could. The problem with Denis Tanter was that he wanted Carol all to himself.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DO YOU KNOW WHAT gives one man power over other men? You’d think it would be money, or some high position, being a judge perhaps, or a politician. In all honesty, when are you ever troubled by that kind of level? I’ve never had the Foreign Minister turn up at my door and insist I move my car. I think if he did I would probably call the police. I’m not saying they don’t have power, of a kind. Of course they do – too much of it, maybe. It just isn’t the sort of thing that presses you down on a daily basis. You don’t have them come into your house and take your wallet, if you see what I mean.

  There is a lesser place, though, underneath the courts and security guards, right down where it can really tear the spleen right out of you. It doesn’t take an army and it certainly doesn’t take enormous amounts of money. For just a few hundred pounds a week, one man can hire another one to punch and kick and break, maybe even to rape or rob, if that was needed. Just one man to do whatever he’s asked. That’s all it takes. I can only imagine what it must be like to have one.

  Men like Denis Tanter spend a pleasant evening in a restaurant, and by the time they get home, someone they want to frighten has had his door kicked in and his fingers broken by a complete stranger. You can’t go to the police because you know they’ll make it worse the second time. You know that fear is usually enough. Most men aren’t able to stop one violent criminal holding them down and battering their head so hard on the kitchen tiles that they break. Most men care about a woman, or a child, something that grabs them and squeezes their chest in terror if they’re even mentioned. You don’t get fear like that from politicians or judges. You know they have limits, no matter what happens. If you walk free out of court, you don’t expect the police to send men round to your house that night to give you a bit of justice.

  I’d actually met Denis’s man, Michael, at the New Year’s Eve party. He wasn’t enormous, like those bouncers you see on club doorways. Denis had found himself a solid, six-foot boxer without a single moral to trouble his conscience. I even chatted to Michael that first evening, and I think I should have had some sort of warning, some instinct. Life would be a lot easier if we felt a shiver down the spine when we met a man who will be punching us unconscious a month later.

  I realize now that he stopped me at the bar because Denis was talking to Carol. Just one man on the payroll makes that sort of thing easy. Just a quick word and the husband loses almost an hour in strained small talk with a complete stranger. I even had a tray full of drinks, but every time I started to go back Michael dropped one of his hands onto my arm and made some comment, or joke, or asked me some inane question. I remember he said he had put on a bit of weight over the winter, but come spring, when he was ‘in season’, he would turn it back into muscle. I’d never heard anyone describe themselves that way before. It wasn’t exactly politeness that kept me there, it was a prickling fear that he was drunk and he was violent and I didn’t want to offend him. I stood it as long as I could, and when he turned away at last to pick up his change from the barman, I walked back to the table.

  Carol wasn’t there and neither was Denis. It’s so easy now to understand what had happened, but at the time I just didn’t. Midnight was coming and I had the drinks in. I sipped one pint to the dregs and then started on another when she was suddenly back at the table and Denis was there too, kissing his wife just as the countdown started. You wouldn’t think I could miss something like that, knowing what I did, but I’ve stopped that sort of paranoia. It eats you alive, especially if you’re right every now and then. You really can’t watch them all the time. It destroys your nerves, your stomach and maybe your sanity.

  Carol did look a little flushed, I remember. I put it down to alcohol and excitement. Balloons came down from the ceiling and everybody joined hands with strangers and sang that Scottish song where you only know one line and everyone repeats it over and over. There was a man in a kilt there and I remember smiling when I saw him and turning to Carol to see if she’d noticed. She smiled back at me and everything was all right.

  The thing that really makes me bitter is that poor old Denis didn’t know the woman he was dealing with. If he’d gone hard at her like he did at his business acquaintances, he’d have had her skirt up after a meal or two. The trouble with Carol is that she looks the complete opposite. If you can imagine a Grace Kelly with dark hair, it isn’t her at all, but the attitude, the long neck and pale skin, that’s the same. She’s the sort of woman you want to muss a little, to see a tendril of hair come loose and a wicked gleam come into her eyes. You know the type? She’s the sort of woman you want to gasp when you kiss her. I worked hard at it when we were young together. She was a little drunk that first time with me. It wasn’t the way I’d pictured it. I could hardly see her in the dark room back at the student halls. Her thighs were long and white and they made a whispering sound as I ran my hand down them. I remember th
at she cradled my head against her, almost like holding a child. I think one of us cried, but we were drunk and young and it was a long time ago and two different people.

  Denis thought he had found the great love of his life, of course.

  Carol sells houses to people with too much money, the sort of people who surround themselves with gold-framed pictures and match the colour to their bath taps. Denis wouldn’t have looked out of place on her client list, even if he’d brought Michael as a driver. I heard his name when a girl from Carol’s office left a message about taking ‘Mr Tanter’ to another viewing. I didn’t recognize it at first, but there was another one the following day. I pressed the buttons on the phone and I heard the girl’s voice – with him in the background, making a wisecrack. I think I probably knew then, as I wiped the message. Carol hadn’t heard it yet, but I just wanted it off the phone memory, as if I could wipe away my suspicions with a couple of quick clicks.

  She hates me when I think something is going on. She says I pretend to be normal and friendly, but all the time there is a spite in my eyes that she can’t bear. She says it makes her want to get out of the house. Sometimes she does and comes back smelling of drink and too much perfume at two or three in the morning. When she’s drunk, I pretend to be asleep. If she sees I’m awake, she talks like a gutter whore and it’s all I can do to lie there and pretend I can’t hear every last word of it. It’s just another one of the little games we play with each other.

  I think it took Denis about a week to ask her to come to a hotel with him. It might have been sooner if he’d known her, of course, but I think he probably felt like the luckiest man in the world as she dropped her skirt to her ankles and stepped out of it. I’ve been on the receiving end of the best she has to offer, and it caught me. I mean, I’m still here after some pretty vicious years, so I can sort of appreciate what Denis went through, you know? I’m not saying I understand the man. He was a taker and I knew it from the first time I met him. Like my brother, he was one of those people who use those around them, for fun, for sex, for friendship.

  Sometimes they make a mistake and think they’ve found something more important than it really is. Denis did that with Carol, the moment he woke up in the hotel and found out she’d gone. She’d come home to me in the small hours and Denis was not the sort to understand that kind of relationship. Hell, I don’t understand it and I’m in it.

  She came home to me because she always comes home to me. She doesn’t stay till the morning, not after they’ve gone to sleep. After all, a hotel morning is just bad breath, crumpled clothes and a full English breakfast with too much salt and burned coffee. To be honest, I don’t really care why she trusts me enough to keep coming back. Maybe she even loves me as much as I love her.

  That great love of hers didn’t stop it happening again, of course. I don’t know whether it was another hotel, or maybe even his own house. The difference from my point of view was that the second time she spent an evening away that week, Denis arranged for me to have a friendly visitor. While he was bending Carol over a bed somewhere plush, I actually opened the door with a piece of buttered toast in my hand. Can you imagine anything more middle class and harmless? I had a mouthful of bread and Marmite as I recognized Michael and I was in the middle of trying to say something when he took a step forward and shoved me onto my back. I think he trod on one of my feet first, but I didn’t take much in as I smacked my head on the hall floor. If it had been carpeted I might have been a little sharper for the next few minutes. Unfortunately it was block wood, and one of the things that sold us the house when we first saw it.

  It was the casual nature of it that was so insulting. I think most of us have wondered how we would handle a burglar, say, if we confronted one. I thoroughly enjoy politicians talking about ‘reasonable force’ for those moments in life. You can take it from me that terror makes a mockery of anything resembling reason. I opened the door with some vague thought about a football match on the television. A moment later I was half-stunned and blinded by the hall light directly above me. I felt a hand grab my shirt collar and I found myself sliding along the wooden floor towards the kitchen. I panicked and tried to get up, but I wasn’t wearing shoes and my socks slipped underneath me. I couldn’t do more than make kicking motions in a panic.

  There’s a small table and chair in the kitchen. It’s too cramped really, but Carol insisted on being able to use the words ‘breakfast room’ for when we sell the house on. It is her business, after all. That’s the sort of stupid thought that came into my head as Michael dragged me up and dumped me on my own chair. Reasonable force? I’d like to see one of them try it with Michael resting his great fists on my kitchen table.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said.

  ‘Have you got whisky?’ he said. I nodded, and out of habit I half rose to get it.

  He pressed a hand on my shoulder, holding me down with no trouble at all.

  ‘You just tell me where,’ he said, looking at the cupboards along the kitchen wall.

  ‘By the door, there,’ I told him. He would turn and I would reach for one of the knives by the sink behind me.

  Instead of following my plan, he reached out and belted me across the face, giving it everything he had. I think I must have blacked out for a while as I lost track of where he was and had to crane my head round, looking for him. He was pouring a little Laphroaig into a glass and everything in the kitchen seemed brighter than usual, like a film.

  ‘Get out,’ I mumbled at him, feeling ill. Even as I spoke, I felt the acid come back into my mouth. It’s always been the way with me, after some problem with a deteriorating valve. Stomach acid is powerful stuff. I get a blast of it in the back of the throat when I’m frightened or angry, and it burns and burns. There’s a name for the valve problem, but the operation is brutal.

  ‘I’m not getting out, Davey. You know that,’ he said. I hated him calling me that. My brother and Carol called me Davey, no one else. No one else in my life had known me young enough.

  I saw he was wearing black leather gloves to grip the whisky glass. I shook my head to clear it and touched my lips gingerly, trying to feel if they could honestly have swollen as far as they felt. The whole side of my face belonged to someone else. I could only look out of it at him.

  ‘I don’t want to be doing this, Davey, I want you to believe that,’ Michael said. There was real regret in his eyes, almost a fellow feeling. I hoped to God he wasn’t there to kill me.

  ‘Doing what?’ I said, terrified. The acid was pooling in my mouth by then, more bitter than vinegar. I wondered what would happen if I spat it into his eyes. Would it burn him the way it seemed to burn me?

  ‘Giving you a little warning, Davey. And drinking your whisky. Telling you to let her go.’ He seemed almost apologetic as he said the last part.

  ‘Let who go? Carol?’ I said. I wasn’t thinking well, with my own blood on the table in front of me. It wouldn’t stop dripping out of my nose and I could almost draw loops with it on the pine surface.

  ‘Someone we both know thinks she may be afraid of leaving you, Davey. I think you and I know that’s not true. You’re not the type, are you, Davey? You’re a sensible sort who won’t make me have to do something more permanent, aren’t you?’

  ‘She won’t leave me,’ I said, which may be one of the most idiotic things ever to come from my mouth. I should have offered to drive her over to Denis’s house in my own car if Michael would have gone. The thought of his house changed the direction of my spinning thoughts.

  ‘What about his own wife?’ I demanded. ‘I remember her. What does she have to say about it?’

  Michael shook his head, as if saddened by all the world’s troubles. ‘She’s left him, Davey. It hasn’t been good for a while, and I think your wife was the last straw. He’s a free man, Davey. And that’s not good for you, I’m sorry to say.’

  ‘You’re insane,’ I told him. ‘You can’t just tell a man to leave his wife.’

  ‘Where
do you think she is at the moment, Davey? What do you think she’s doing?’ Michael demanded. ‘This isn’t like the local vicar’s wife, is it? I wouldn’t like to imagine what she’s getting up to, would you? If I was you, old son, I would leave the bitch and say good riddance to her. What do you want with a woman who takes off like that? We may be doing you a little favour, if you think about it. In the long run, you know.’

  My lack of shock seemed to surprise him, and he frowned at me before refilling the glass and corking the bottle. I saw his hand move, but I had hardly begun to duck when the whisky splashed across my face. It burned worse than the stomach acid inside and I yelped, holding up both hands. My eyes streamed with tears and I don’t know if it was the fumes or rage at her for doing this to me, for letting these people into our lives. I couldn’t think, and when he hit me again I cried out for him to stop, over and over, sobbing.

  ‘You drank a bit too much, Davey, and you fell down the steps outside, catching your face on the ground, something like that. When she asks, Davey, you know. I wouldn’t want you telling lies about strange men in your kitchen, would I? You wouldn’t want to try and turn her against her new friend with a few whispers, believe me. If she hears I was here, I will show you what I call a second visit, understand? It’ll be a lot worse, Davey.’ He shook his head slowly, as if imagining it. ‘Don’t make me come back.’

  I was shaking when he left. I drank a little more of the whisky, and by the time she came home the following morning I was still awake and I was drunk and I was raging. I heard her cry out in shock when she saw the wreck Michael had made of my face. Before I could say a word, she was searching in the medicine cupboard for creams and plasters.