by CJ Hannon
She isn’t a snob exactly, but she will keep a room loyal; that is, not switch brands of paint for each discreet room. The bathroom for example, was all done with B&Q’s own brand of Brilliant White for bathrooms. She points this out, and Martin just smiles, arms crossed, a strange expression on his face.
‘What?’
‘Just you.’
She assumes this is a positive.
He smiles, sips his coffee, then his expression changes. ‘Your period started on the sixth, correct?’
‘What?’
‘The sixth? Your period.’
Where had that come from? Was he trying to catch her off guard? The dates of her fakery are etched into her mind. ‘Correct. Yes.’
He nods to himself. ‘Thought so. I made a note. Got one of these apps, it predicts when you’ll be ovulating.’
Then why ask?
‘We should hit the window, what do you say?’
‘I say I’m all painty and that is a far too mathematical a proposition.’
‘Come on,’ he grins, stepping nearer. ‘Paint coveralls are surprisingly sexy.’
‘You need a shower.’
He yanks at her collar and the popper buttons burst apart. ‘See?’
She relents and lets him unpeel her, her coveralls fall and pool at her feet. He slides her hair band from the pony tail.
‘Turn around.’
She does, and bends over the kitchen island. He pushes her stance a little wider and spits into his hand. He’s a little awkward at guiding it in at first, she adjusts and then he’s inside her. It’s neither good nor bad. Just a thing that’s present, like a stranger in the corner of a room. The sink needs cleaning, there’s a little ring of mould around the outflow. He pumps, his breathing getting harder. The resting lid on the nearest paint tin wobbles, rattles, and threatens to topple. It is a soothing green, the Green Calke.
He comes in a juddering fashion, palm pressed firmly on her back. He draws out, reaches past her and grabs some kitchen roll, hands her a couple of sheets and keeps one for himself.
She snatches the sheets and holds it between her legs, walking awkwardly out of the kitchen.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Toilet.’
‘Are you mad? Leave it. Go and put your legs up in the lounge.’
She does as instructed. The vessel.
Later that week. Melody is at her doctor’s surgery. She runs her finger over the tiny little bump in her upper arm.
The practice nurse applies a local, she waits.
‘Can you feel this?’
Melody looks over, sees her skin absorbing the prodding of a pair of tweezers. ‘No, I can’t feel anything.’
The nurse wipes the skin again, takes a fifteen blade out of its sterile wrapping.
‘Be still for me, love.’ The nurse makes a small, neat incision.
‘You’ve got a steady hand.’ Melody says.
The nurse glances up, ‘Most people like to look away.’
‘I’m a veterinary surgeon.’
‘Ah.’
Blood, her life juice, forms a beaded line. Somewhere between Salsa Red by Dulux, or Little Greene’s Atomic Red No.190.
The nurse removes the implant with quick efficiency. A tiny, thin cylinder. Then she inserts the replacement. She really is rather good.
‘Who’d have thought something so small… Amazing little things, aren’t they?’
‘Progestin is the real wonder, but yes.’
‘Do you find you still get your period?’
‘I think once in the last three years.’
‘Very common with hormone implants.’ The nurse places a little strip of adhesive gauze over the incision. The nurse turns, and as she’s washing her hands, says something Melody can’t quite catch about feedback.
‘What? Yes, all very good.’
The nurse cuts the tap, dries her hands. ‘That’s you all done then, good for another three years. You can remove it at any time, of course.’
‘Uh-huh.’
That evening, watching the Blue Planet, she feels eyes on her, Martin not paying attention. It’s irritating. He cradles his bulbous glass of red wine, takes a sip. It looks good, a Ruby Starlet by Dulux. He smirks.
‘What?’
Martin strokes her forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Is it me or do I detect a little radiant glow about you?’
She fans herself. Perhaps the heating is up too high. ‘Your imagination, no doubt. Go on, let’s have a sip.’
He moves the glass out of her reach. ‘Better not, Moody, you know. Just in case.’
33
Astrid
The Shard building looms, as if London, pierced, has since fallen and pooled around the hilt of a blade. Christ, what a day. A morning lost in court, watching the parents and uncle of the Vietnamese marihuana growers getting torn to shreds. It looked like the children would be put into care. The whole case was uncomfortable. The letter of the law should be followed. Then, why did it feel so wrong?
She walks fast, making up for her lateness. Bloody trains. She checks the name of the pub, and thumb scrolls up to the exchange with Jenna that preceded it. Something niggles at the detective in her.
A: I think I can make it up later x
The reply:
J: Only if you can. No pressure.
A: Pa—lease. Pressure? Me? See you on shoot. x
J: For reals? Can’t wait! For you, I can ALWAYS make space in my busy schedule, xxx
She darkens the screen, pockets it. Keeps walking. On face value, it’s all fine but she sifts. Analyses.
I can always make room for you, and what? You can’t for me?
Completely unfair. She could probably sleep for twelve hours straight, but where was she? In London, making the effort. Astrid fixes a smile, not letting the negativity in.
You’re here to have a good time.
The pub is warm, noisy. Jenna’s crowd are easy to spot. A few actors she vaguely recognises, the film and production crew. All young, edgy types and she self-consciously runs her hand over the bristles of her undercut, as if clinging onto her one little touch of rebelliousness.
Jenna, wearing an olive-green beret and a loose Argyle sweater, has her knees up to her chin, hugging them in as if on their own couch at home. She’s deep in conversation with a pretty redhead; the female lead in the series. Astrid plants a smile on her face and banishes away any jealousy.
‘Hey, you made it!’ Jenna pops up, abandoning the redhead and plants a soft, lingering kiss on the lips. Ice cold. Breath strawberry-sweet.
‘Hi, you. On the daiquiris already?’
‘It’s not that early. Come and meet everyone.’
Self-consciousness melts. Confidence manifests.
‘Hey everyone,’ she holds up a hand, ‘my round, what’s everyone want?’
By her third long-neck, she’s enjoying herself.
Investigations were a drug, enthralling, but wore you down. She really needed to blow off a little steam.
A drunk scriptwriter mines her for real-life situations she’s worked on to add verisimilitude into scenes of a crime thriller he’s writing.
‘Give it up, my Astrid’s a total pro. Whenever I ask her about that cobra murder case she’s working on, she won’t tell me shit.’
She likes the possessive my, Jenna inserts before her name.
‘Hooooly shit,’ the redhead says. Irish, blue eyes and a constellation of freckles on her beautiful symmetrical face. Astrid hates her. ‘I read about that in the paper, you’re working on it?’
She nods, takes a swig, aware all eyes are on her suddenly.
A boy leans in. ‘You can talk generics though, right? Like I’m auditioning for a part as a detective next week. What’s it like for real?’
She frowns. ‘Right now… like being a dog in a field full of rabbits and not knowing which one to chase after.’ In her head it sounded funnier.
Her audience is left flat. ‘I’m just… It takes a lot of energy and focus and–’
‘What she’s too diplomatic to say, folks,’ Jenna cuts in, ‘is that this is her night off and she doesn’t want to think about the bloody case, so someone buy her a drink!’
The one with the audition volunteers, and Astrid mouths a thank you to Jenna, though in truth she’d have loved to have talked about it. Could have chewed their ears off all night about it. But she can’t. Keeping it bottled up, her thoughts to herself, that’s what takes the energy.
Jenna squeezes her knee under the table.
Her phone vibrates in her pocket. An e-mail from Gardner. She skims it, gathers that the AI has picked up Austin Pemberton’s Volvo within the vicinity of the Kitteridge Practice during the death window. Her heart pounds.
‘So much for the night off?’
‘Right.’ Astrid closes her eyes, admonishing herself. ‘Sorry. What were we talking about again?’
Out of her periphery, the redhead is playing with her straw, rolling it along the line of her lips while staring at Jenna.
34
Melody
Melody carries one end of a large tank. Inside, a twisted mess of snakes writhe and coil. Four? Five? She can’t tell.
The crowd parts revealing a roped-off area. Behind it, is what Olaf refers to as “the track”. The track is made up of a series of transparent tubes, each its own lane.
‘Down,’ Olaf grunts. The relief in her shoulder is bliss. ‘Wait here,’ Olaf says, and disappears to the end of the track.
She scans the crowd for a likely Sheridan. Men are dotted around, standing on strategically positioned crates next to whiteboards with odds written on, taking money, making a note for those with lines of credit. The crowd strains to look at the tank by her feet. She crouches down and counts them properly. Five. Patterned with identical near-diamond patterns on greyish-black skin. Betting on this must be beyond random. No form guides or physical tells in the paddock. The snakes were indistinguishable. And this was where Martin racked up his debt? Their massive debt.
Olaf is lowering something into the end of one of the tubes. ‘Oh…’ she says, realisation connecting like metal to a magnet. What were they? Iguanas? Chameleons? He places one at the end of each tube.
Olaf holds up his hand to someone, then the voice booms on the speaker, ‘Place your final bets, please.’
When Olaf returns, she can’t help herself. ‘This is patently wrong! What are you doing to these poor animals?’
He shakes her off. ‘Trust me. If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be doing this.’ His voice is hitched with worry. ‘There’ll be time for a morality lesson later, not now! Open the hatches on the lanes.’
With a pair of long snake tongs, Olaf fishes into the tank and secures one of the snakes while she opens the transparent box for lane one. He drops the snake in, she closes the top hatch and they repeat the process until all five snakes are loaded.
‘What are they?’
‘Racer snakes,’ Olaf says, he doesn’t look happy. He makes a sign to someone to hurry up. ‘It’s too cold in here, these lamps aren’t generating enough heat.’
‘One minute. Final bets paaalease,’ the voice on the PA booms.
‘When I say go, I need you to pull the release.’ He shows her where.
All around the track, behind rope, men gather. Pre-race chatter and excitement echoes around the barn. At the far end of the tube, the little reptiles twitch and assess their final prison.
‘Three should win,' Olaf says, almost to himself. ‘It better.’
Melody doesn’t know what to say, the sense that she is part of this spectacle, enabling it, disgusts her.
The countdown starts over the PA.
‘On zero, release!’ Olaf shouts.
‘Three, two, one…’
A roar explodes from the crowd. For a moment nothing happens.
Olaf taps the back of the boxes, trying to frighten them into action, urging them on in some Viking tongue.
Then one goes, number three. Then another, then a third. They shoot at incredible speed down their tubes, draining from one end of the tube to the other like sand in a tipped rainmaker.
Braying shouts, the red-faced excitement, swearing, jostling of the crowd. The emotion spilling out of them all, it made no sense.
A bell sounds.
‘Number three, the winner!’
Pockets of celebration. Moans from the rest. Olaf lets out huge sigh of relief, mutters something under his breath. The excitement recedes, winners and losers reconvene at the bar.
Olaf tongs the two that didn’t leave the starter boxes and returns them to the tank.
‘The humidity, the heat, it isn’t right.’
Melody walks along the tube to the end. One of the snakes is in a ball, squeezing the life out of the baby iguana, like a twitching intestine. This might be prey and predator, but it is not natural, not on a January evening in a hay barn in Sussex.
Olaf returns each of the snakes back to the tank. Melody helps him carry it back to the van, thinking, How many more hours of this do I have to endure?
‘I guess that sort of worked,’ Olaf says, sliding open his van. ‘Richie saw a nature documentary. Wanted to recreate it. It’s not easy though, these reptiles aren’t performance animals. He doesn’t want to hear it though. It’s all, just make it happen.’ He snaps his fingers.
‘Where is Sheridan?’
Olaf doesn’t answer, but affixes clasps to hold the tank in place. There are other tanks in there, covered in cloth, the tank light spidering into a halo through the black fabric. There’s the hum of a generator, Olaf checking the temperatures of each of the tanks, back turned to her.
She takes two quick pictures with her camera phone. ‘What else do you have in here?”
‘You should go, you’ll be needed,’ Olaf says, without turning.
There’s a small queue at the hog roast, but she isn’t the slightest bit hungry. Inside, the men gather around the central baled arena.
Vet bag slung over her shoulder, she pushes through to the front and sees two dog-handlers. their muzzled charges straining at their leashes. A Staffy and a Japanese tosa, the handlers barely able to keep hold. People hold out fistfuls of cash and yell out numbers.
The handlers remove the muzzles. The barking is razor sharp with intent. Foam gathers around the black lips of the tosa, it doesn’t look as intimidating as the muscular Staffy, but it is no less dangerous.
The countdown begins and her mettle gives way.
She cannot watch, turning her back as the barking reaches a crescendo. The mauling, the yelping of one, the deafening yells of the crowd. Melody holds her hands over her ears, clamps her teeth together. She tries playing music in her head, but nothing comes.
The crowd’s excitement pops like a balloon. It is over. She turns to see a limping tosa and the Staffy lying in a bloody heap on the floor. The handlers are in the ring.
Melody climbs up the bales and drops into the arena, snapping on latex gloves and drops next to the Staffy.
It’s bulbous rib cage shakes and shudders. Still alive. Just.
The owner is lock-jawed, tears welling up in his eyes.
‘I’m a vet.’
‘Do it,’ he says, with an edge to his voice.
Melody can’t process it. The pain she is seeing. If he cared about his dog, why would he fight it? Let it get hurt? She gets out a syringe and a vial of Pentobarbital and for a moment considers jabbing it into the arm of the handler.
‘How much does he weigh?
‘Forty pounds.’
‘About eighteen kilos?’ She calculates aloud, drawing forty mil into the syringe and sinks it into the rear leg muscle. She pats the dog on the flank, stroking it. ‘It’ll all be over in a moment, shhh.’
The idiot handler rests a head on his fur, muttering something.
She excuses herself to check on the tosa, more
wary, instructing the handler to muzzle it. There’s a nasty bite mark near the neck.
‘He’ll be alright, fucking hard bastard this one,’ the handler says.
‘I’ll need to clean the wound and I’d recommend antibiotics to be on the safe side.’
‘Hear that?’ He yells over. ‘Mine’s fine. Not a fucking pussy like your Staffy.’
Something shifts in the atmosphere, she back-pedals. The Staffy owner rises from his crouch slowly, fists trembling by his side. When he turns, there’s a knife in his hand.
Her back bumps into something soft. The bale wall. She’s retreated as far as she can. She could climb out… but doesn’t, she stands transfixed.
‘Fucking come on then.’ At his side, the tosa growls.
In a moment the two men are a blur of tangled limbs. The dog, limp, jumping around them in excitement. A shout goes up, people appear around the arena, shouting, jeering.
They fight over the knife, rolling through the dirt and bloody hay. A chaos of limbs and grunting. Then Pug is there, two henchmen fall in behind, but Pug doesn’t need them. He separates the men and without even a microsecond of hesitation thumps one in the face and then headbutts the other. They drop in turn, like felled trees, each unconscious before they even hit the floor.
Her hand clutches her chest.
Heart beating through it fit to burst.
He wipes his forehead with a handkerchief, motions to his helpers. They drag the unconscious and bleeding men into a sitting up position, against the hay.
‘Kitteridge. Sort these two pricks out.’ Pug thumbs to them, and climbs up out of the arena to cheers.
She unsticks her feet from the ground and moves forward, stepping through the smeared blood.
She stands over the men a moment, knocked out and lying in her shadow. Imagines having done it herself.
Oddly, it makes her feel a little stab of power.
35
Astrid
Astrid escapes from the duvet. She stretches. Stiff, uncomfortable. Bloody pull-out beds. Her head is fuzzy, mouth so dry, cotton wool would come out instead of words. Jenna still sleeps. There’s a small patch of drool in the shape of a comet by her mouth. Adorable.