Making my way to the rear of the building by the fire escape, I let Eli in.
We took the lift to the fourth floor and Eli coolly shot the lock off the door with a silenced automatic.
It was as if Tom’s suit had mutated, formed furniture and built itself property. Everything was impossibly and horribly white. It was like walking into an alien spacecraft, and not in a cool way.
‘Jesus, how does any guy live like this? I’m afraid to touch anything.’
‘He’s severe OCD.’ Eli was running his hands along the back of a pristine sofa. He could never deal with chaos. Maybe it’s not so surprising that he expected this.’
‘Hm.’
There were no pictures on the walls, nothing. Just the sofa, coffee table and a TV so large as to be horrifying. A black hole threatening to engulf everything else in the room.
Squinting, I made my way down the hall. The bedroom was no different, the wardrobes undisturbed. I could picture him having emergency luggage already packed and ready to leave. He must have had no attachment to this home, despite his best efforts to keep it spotless. There were a million things I’d return to my house for if I knew I was never coming back; maybe too many things. It was disgusting really, our infantile clutching at stuff.
‘You sure he wouldn’t keep all kinds of paper shit in an office somewhere?’ I called back to Eli.
‘He definitely said at home.’ He appeared in the doorway, and went to part some of the hangers and suits in the wardrobe. ‘He’d have a box for it. Just something to keep loose paper together in one place. Like that!’
He gestured at the suitcases and shoeboxes lining the upper shelf.
We both set about dragging them down in piles and opening them. Most of the cases contained other, smaller cases. But the shoeboxes had more. I watched Eli pick up a wad of bank statements and whistle.
‘What?’
‘If I gave a shit about money, I’d be jealous.’ He put them to one side and pushed another of the boxes towards me. ‘Have a look through there.’
I sifted through stationery, letters, a few scattered birthday cards, yellowed childhood photos and photos of his parents and then…
‘Hey, check it.’
Burning palm trees.
DEAR TOM.
‘Fuck!’ Eli reached out and his hands stopped in mid-air, fell, jerkily came up again. ‘Well, read it.’
I turned the postcard over.
DEAR TOM,
Sorry for not being in touch. I’ve been away for a while, teaching in St Louis. I appreciated your letter when Elsbeth died. Don’t think it passed by unnoticed or unappreciated.
I’m going away for a while again.
We are hard pressed on every side, crushed; perplexed, in despair; persecuted, abandoned; struck down, destroyed.
Sincerely,
T.
Eli stared at me.
‘He sounds cheery,’ I said.
‘Yeah, that got dark pretty quickly,’ Eli remarked, reaching out and taking the postcard. ‘What does the last bit mean?’
‘It’s a Bible quote, I think.’
Screwing up his face like a bad smell had entered the room. ‘Trent wasn’t a Christian.’
‘Yeah, but it’s not a proper Bible quote, the real one is… positive. My kids learn them at school, the good bits like that.’
‘The bits that aren’t about sodomy and genocide?’
‘Yeah, those.’
Eli rubbed a hand over his face, collecting his thoughts.
‘I don’t know…’ he said, slowly.
‘Know what?’
‘Whether to drive on to St Louis and worry about Tom later, or stay here and hope we get lucky.’
I cleared my throat. ‘We again, is it? Like how you slipped that in.’
‘Like you’re going to go home after reading that.’ He thrust the card in my face. ‘He was clearly losing his mind! Starts quoting the Bible and then disappears off the face of the earth. Are you saying that doesn’t intrigue you?’
It had. The strange little message had given me a buzz, as if we’d uncovered a lost treasure map. But I wasn’t going to make it sound as though enticing my interest was that fucking easy.
I snorted and said, ‘There’s still a psychotic albino on the loose so at the moment I’m more concerned about that.’
‘Then we’ll go,’ he cut in. ‘We’ll go straight to St Louis. I’ll deal with Tom later, but come on, Ron, help me find Trent.’
And then—
‘You’re not meant to be in here…’
We both turned, necks snapping back at this unfamiliar voice and the unfamiliar puffy white face with oversized comedy black eyebrows scowling at us.
I have no fucking idea how he got there; the doorman suddenly stood in the doorway, looking back and forth between us with his weapon still holstered but armed nonetheless. What sort of doorman was fucking armed? But it was his gaze coming to rest on Eli that made me move, the half whispered half muttered, ‘It’s you!’ that propelled me off the bed and across the room to rugby-tackle the guy to the floor.
‘Fuck!’
I must have almost pulled his arm clean out of his socket, as I dragged it across me and bashed it over and over again into the floor, before I realized it was carpet and wasn’t making a fucking shred of difference, so I freed my right hand and punched him in the face instead.
Spatter marks across the white.
His gun was in my hand.
‘How do you know him?’ I jerked my head back at Eli, who hadn’t moved.
The guy just glared.
‘How do you know him?’
Looking away.
‘I will shoot you,’ I said. ‘In the face.’
‘Mr Love… made me keep his photo behind my desk.’
‘Did he say who he was?’
‘No. He just said if he was seen I had to alert him immediately, wherever he was.’
‘Wait wait.’ Eli clapped his hands together. ‘Wherever he was, you say? Do you know where he is right now?’
The doorman shook his head, but a little too late.
‘No, I don’t know where he is.’
‘Yes, you do,’ I said, driving the barrel into his throat.
‘I don’t, I promise.’
‘Tell us where he is and we won’t kill you before we leave. How about that?’
Eli crouched and rubbed his fingertips against the blood on the floor, creating streaks. ‘I imagine he’s offered to pay you a lot for this trouble.’
Silence.
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ Raising his fingers from the carpet, turning them over in front of his eyes. ‘Let me tell you now, it isn’t going to make any difference, because Tom is going to die either way. You can die with him if you want. But is he worth your life, really?’
The guy was thinking.
Eli said, ‘He’s not worth dying for, you must know that.’
Eyes moving from Eli to me, downwards to the gun under his chin.
He sniffed and said, ‘Get the fuck off me and I’ll tell you.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Daisy
I don’t know what made me think it was a good idea to try and keep tabs on Edie and her phone calls. Maybe it was because of Seven and what she had done, giving me ideas. Maybe I just felt so disconnected from what was going on that I craved any insight. Or maybe everything seemed like a good idea when you were dabbing MDMA for breakfast. It was the only thing that kept me going to work without wanting to kill myself when I came home to an empty flat.
Nic was never there any more, so consumed was he by the search for Seven. Our other flatmate, Mark Chester, was also away. Both of them felt responsible for what had happened. Mark had told me himself: he should have seen it coming. Nic didn’t need to say it; his absence spoke volumes.
‘My phone’s dead,’ I said – hollered – to Edie in the middle of a shift over the house music playing over Xara’s performance. ‘Can I call Nic on yours?’
‘Sure, honey.’
Edie was sat at a table of customers and barely looked at me as she handed her phone over.
I crouched outside the fire escape and scrolled through her address book. I glanced at my watch, calculated the time difference, and tried calling Ronnie. He might answer if he thought it was Edie.
He didn’t answer.
Noel wasn’t here again.
Prickles of anxiety, little claws grating against the inside of my breastplate.
I’m not paid enough for this shit.
I didn’t sign up for this shit.
I’m not cut out for this shit.
I called Nic even though I knew he wouldn’t pick up, just to make it look convincing, and then scrolled through the address book again. I didn’t recognize any names. I went into her Calls tab and didn’t recognize any names there either.
Paul O.
I copied a few of the numbers into my phone and stood up. The very act of becoming upright almost made me black out. All sound was amplified, the hum of traffic and activity on the main road becoming a mechanical whirr. My muscles went numb. I leant against the wall until my vision cleared and everything returned to normal.
Putting both phones in the pocket of my shorts, I took out my tobacco and started to roll a cigarette to steady my hands.
I started laughing. ‘You’re not losing it, you’re not losing it, totally not, no way.’
The cigarette did nothing but increase my anxiety so I stubbed it out and called Noel again.
He wasn’t picking up to either number.
Fucking figures.
‘Hey, I don’t know where you are, if you’re at home or whatever but can you think about maybe, y’know, coming in anytime soon? It’d be super nice to not deal with all this shit on my own. Um… Oh, fuck it.’
That was the message I left. I wasn’t confident he’d listen to it.
I went inside and gave Edie back her phone.
There probably was nothing going on, I thought; no relevance to the numbers I’d copied. I just needed to let my brain chemicals level out.
That night when I went home, Nic was there. He told me that Mark Chester was back from Russia and then he asked me to move out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ronnie
When I’d been younger, way younger, maybe before Eamonn had been born but it was hard to be sure, Dad took me on a ranching holiday in Oklahoma. On the second day he’d taught me how to skin a beaver and then later on he let me help him flay – but not actually hunt and kill – a cow.
I’d always thought of skin as an indisputable part of you, attached with the surety that your hands were to your arms or your lungs to the inside of your ribcage. Watching the skinnings gave me nightmares for years. I was horrified by how easily the skin came away. Far from being impressed with the efficiency of the method, I watched the knife nicking skin away from flesh, nicking away and nicking away, and it falling into my father’s hands like it was meant to do that, like orange peel – no, easier than orange peel – and I told them I needed to go for a piss behind a tree and projectile-vomited instead.
In my dreams, I’d be doing something totally normal, like playing football, and I’d fall and nick a part of my skin, flaying it clean off. I woke up, always clutching at my arms, convinced my skin was no longer there until I had turned on the light.
Thinking about it, as we did the same thing to Thomas Love, strung upside down in another snow-white bedroom, that was probably why I’d got the tattoos on my forearms. They were nothing fancy, just my kids’ names. But they were a small reminder that parts of my body weren’t going anywhere.
Mine weren’t, anyway.
I couldn’t say the same for Thomas.
‘What’s wrong?’ Eli asked, as I took a step back and supported myself against the nearest wall.
‘Nothing. Really, go crazy. I’m just gonna sit for a second.’
I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands clasped in my lap. Even by my standards, this was too much blood. I lost the will to participate at around the time I realized Eli was using this extreme act of violence to lock me in, lock me into the alibi we’d have to share.
Thomas hadn’t gone far, Eli had been right when he’d predicted that. He was too complacent and lazy to really go on the run; it would require too much effort when you could just throw money at the problem instead.
‘Are you sure you’re good?’ Eli checked again.
‘Fine, just go ahead.’
I didn’t have to participate. Eli hadn’t been the one to kill Carey. If I wanted to sit by and observe, there wasn’t anything wrong with that.
It didn’t seem to bother Eli too much. He pushed me aside some time after Thomas had stopped screaming through the tape across his mouth, and dug both hands into the sides of his face so hard I thought he was going to rip his skull clean in half.
I had been going to call my kids after we left the body, hanging, shredded and caked in blood, mouth lolling open, teeth and tongue gone. But I avoided it again. I had this mad idea they’d somehow be able to see the horror on me, through that telepathic link you get with your kids from time to time.
I had a missed call from Edie, I noticed. No fucking way I was dealing with that.
*
We made it past Indianapolis by the end of the day. It was a forty-hour drive from New York to LA, we ascertained from Google Maps. I’d wanted to more carefully plan our route to avoid tolls but Eli didn’t care. He was all about the path of least resistance, though since killing Tom there was a noticeable spring in his step, exhilaration in the way he drove.
Our alibi was watertight, because New York was a city were Eli knew people. No one was going to follow us unless we got extremely unlucky.
It was in Bloomington, this quaint little place – well, quaint by US standards – lined with trees, that I finally found the time and place to Skype Rachel and the kids.
Eli parked outside a hotel, checked us both in and then left to do God-knows-what.
I loitered in my single room for a while, flipped through the room service menu and ordered a burger, some fries, ’slaw and three beers, taking advantage of the fact I’d talked Eli into choosing a slightly more upmarket place in the absence of anything scuzzier.
When food arrived, I took Eli’s dossier out of my bag and spread it all out on the bed, in order of page numbers.
I knew enough people in LA to organize an alibi, surely. I scribbled a list of names, none of whom I’d spoken to face-to-face in a long time, and made a mental note to stop at a payphone and give them all a call.
Cameron Hopper had left Cain & Byrne way before Thomas Love, to work at the BBC, before moving to LA three years ago as a producer. He looked too rough for LA, too Scottish. I wondered if he’d got his teeth done yet. I heard it was mandatory once you got sucked into that scene.
He was a big guy. It wasn’t as if we’d had the element of surprise in New York, but compared to Love, Hopper would be tough to take down. It was only very occasionally that size didn’t matter in that regard. I’d read a news story a while ago about a guy high on meth, who fought off fifteen police officers while publicly masturbating. He was no man-mountain either. That was my definition of dedication.
A Skype call came through from my dad and I answered it with the webcam off.
‘How’s it going?’ I said.
‘Can you hear me?’
‘Yeah, Dad, I can hear you.’
A pause.
‘Can you hear me now?’
‘Yep, I could hear you before.’
‘Can you see me?’
‘No, I haven’t switched the webcam on.’
‘Why?’
I took a deep breath and turned on my webcam.
My dad’s face flooded the screen, pixellated. His eyes focused on me, then at the thumbnail of himself in the corner, frowning.
‘Why can I see myself?’
‘I don’t know, Dad, in case someone breaks in, you can
see them coming up behind you.’
He glanced behind him for a moment.
My dad was one of the smartest men I knew and things like Skype floored him. It almost made me feel sorry for people of his generation, but at the same time it was something to envy. They only had to deal with one universe; the way they had escaped was by old-fashioned means, like books and music and maybe TV. But they didn’t have to fight the lure of the multiverse, the layers and layers of code that now dictated a whole other personification of ourselves, our online doppelgangers.
‘Where are you?’ he asked, looking at the room behind me.
‘Bloomington.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Are you just checking in, Dad?’
‘Do you think Eamonn might have something to gain by joining you?’
I had to get up to answer the knock at the door that heralded the arrival of food, but I hoped that Dad had the time to appreciate my look of disdain. ‘Er, why?’
He shrugged. ‘It would make sense for him to get out of town, maybe see a bit of the country. It’s not good for him here. I can see him slipping back into… old patterns.’
‘Get him a job!’
‘There’s no point bribing someone into giving him a job for him to leave a month later.’ He looked at me, brow first, how he always addressed me when he was pulling rank. ‘Can you stay where you are for a couple of days?’
‘Um, no.’ I felt empowered by the computer screen dividing us.
‘You could always make use of him? He could even help you.’
‘No, I really don’t think he could help.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s already too dangerous without adding Eamonn to the equation.’
‘He could do with becoming used to how you and Eli work.’
‘Like adults. That’s how we work.’
I picked up my burger and tried to fold the entire thing into my mouth.
Dad watched me with blank features. ‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘If Eamonn wants to be useful, he can work on his. And I don’t mean in a forge-it-to-fuck and make-shit-up kinda way. Anyway, how is Mum gonna cope with him coming back with me?’ I asked, eyes on my food. ‘You think this is unfair to her? She gets her son back after all this time and then he leaves the country.’
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