He looked pensive. ‘We might not stay here for ever.’
‘You’re thinking of moving?’
‘Maybe. It would be good for your mother to be around her grandchildren… and her own children.’
‘You’d move the business too?’
Nothing. Just a non-committal downturn of the lips.
The prospect of being in competition with my own father or, worse, being subjected to his overseeing presence, was up there with the most stressful things that had happened in the last week.
‘We’ll think about it, Ronnie. Let me know when you’re arriving in LA.’
‘Is Mum there?’
‘No.’ He fiddled with something to the right of the screen. ‘Be careful. Speak to you soon.’
The screen went black.
I thought about crossing the hallway to bend Eli’s ear about this, but decided to save it for later.
There was a squeaking sound outside and I looked through my ground-floor window to see a black, white and chestnut cat sat on the grass, miaowing.
I left my room and opened the fire escape, glad of the distraction, and it followed me inside, bumping its head against my legs.
‘Hey, what are you doing here, eh?’
I crouched to give it a stroke and it started rolling around on its back. It was wearing a collar; I checked. But there was no information on it. It looked healthy, felt skinny but not malnourished. It was probably just looking for company.
‘You wanna come in and… drink something from the minibar?’ I asked in an unnaturally shrill voice; the voice I reserved for babies, toddlers and small furry things. ‘Come on, come here.’
I backed into my room, propped the door open with my shoes, and sat on my bed again.
The cat followed me in, after a few seconds’ pause, and looked at me with wide green eyes.
‘Come on.’
I patted the bed and it leapt up, starting to flex its claws in and out of the bed sheet, purring. I went to pick up one of the pages about Cameron Hopper’s address but it ran over and started headbutting my hand.
I should buy the kids a cat, I thought. Rachel wasn’t that keen on pets, reasoning that the majority of the work involved with looking after one would fall upon her, but the kids were old enough now to look after a kitten. Maybe it would be good for them, having a bit of responsibility.
Across the hall, I heard Eli’s door open and close. He didn’t come to my room, even though the door was slightly ajar.
For some reason, I was glad.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Daisy
The sofa booths in the Underground were way more comfortable than they appeared, I discovered after my first night of sleeping on them. Even when everything was switched off, the building itself never stopped humming. I’d been homeless and slept in worse places than this. Wrapped in my sleeping bag and relatively sober for the last ten hours, it was the best sleep I’d had in weeks.
I didn’t even feel angry with Nic. Most of what I was feeling was anxiety; the dim wail of it in my veins at all times.
I didn’t get up until quarter to eleven, around the time I would have arrived on any other day. I rolled up the bag and put it in my locker, applied some make-up and made myself a coffee. I checked the gun was under the bar.
The staff doorbell went.
Seven. It’s Seven.
I pushed the reactionary thought away.
Would taking the gun with me be too much? Too paranoid?
I decided it would be, and forced myself to go and answer it unarmed.
A man was outside, walking away.
‘Hey!’ I called.
He turned. There was something instantly familiar about him.
‘Are you looking for someone?’ I asked.
‘Daisy, right?’
Wide, smirking brown eyes observed me from under dark curly hair, and he was wearing a brown waistcoat, like he’d wandered out of a period drama. I felt as though I should be able to place him, if he knew my name.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m Sean. Looking for Noel or Ronnie, are they in?’
‘Er… no. Ronnie’s not in the country, and Noel’s off today. What did you want them about?’
He waved a hand. ‘Ah, work stuff. Don’t worry about it. Neither of them have been answering their phones so thought I’d drop by.’
‘Ok. Anything I can pass on?’
He spoke with confidence, but didn’t quite meet my eyes while talking. There was an air of customer service about him; confrontational insincerity.
‘No, don’t worry about it,’ he said.
‘Really? I can take a message.’
‘No worries, love, really. I can call your other boss.’
‘Edie?’
‘Yeah.’
He gave me an awkward smile, waved, and walked away.
I went back inside to get the keys and then took a walk down the main road to smoke my morning cigarette. The longer I was conscious, the more rough I was beginning to feel. Or it was just sadness, the slow onset of realizing I wasn’t in a relationship any more.
But what Nic and I had been doing for the last year was so far removed from what most people would think of a relationship that it was hard to tell.
That I had nowhere to live was a very real concern.
That Edie was asking questions, trying to assign blame and punishment, was a very real concern.
That random guys were turning up at the club asking after my absentee managers was a very real concern.
That Nic had ended it – whatever it had been – seemed more abstract.
Thinking about him was putting me off smoking.
Across the road, outside a tube station, beneath the big red circle sign.
I dropped my cigarette and stepped into the road, whole body cold, shouting, ‘Seven!’
She was walking away from me but I knew it was her, I knew her that well. The last I’d seen of her properly had been the back of her head. I jumped onto the kerb as I realized I was in the path of a taxi, and followed her, parallel.
‘Seven!’
I waved my arms and thought better of it.
‘Move!’ I snapped, walking into someone’s back and shoving her out of my way.
Seven wasn’t looking at me, wasn’t looking around at all.
I leapt into the road again, terrified of losing her.
What could you say to the person who shot you – even if you had, technically, asked for it – and fucked up your life and the lives of everyone around you? Sent Noel spiralling back into alcoholism, stole everyone’s money and dissolved your familiar routine into chaos? No fucking idea. But I needed to look her in the eye and say… something.
I weaved in and out of the queue of cars on the opposite side of the road, searching for the back of her head.
I just wanted to look her in the eye.
I ran some way down the road, called again, ‘Seven!’
But she’d gone.
I turned down side roads, searching for her. But she’d gone.
Tears sprang to my eyes, coming down brutally from the rush of adrenalin. I turned and started to walk back, tried to light another cigarette but couldn’t, because I couldn’t see and my hands were shaking.
*
If I had to pick a moment out of our timeline to remember for the worst reasons, it would have been when Nic called me at 23:17 and said I needed to get to 79 Bond Street. The time stood out so clearly.
Nic sounded far away and it wasn’t the quality of the line. It was the weird, over-pronounced way he was picking his words.
‘Daisy, I need you to get in the car and come to 79 Bond Street.’
I was on the sofa with my bare feet up on the coffee table, having just got out of the shower and painted my toenails bright green.
‘Um, you sound super odd.’
‘I just need you to come pick me up, right now.’
‘Are you pulling a “no-questions-asked”?’ I struggled to stay li
ght-hearted but I went for it anyway.
‘This isn’t fucking funny.’
I went shrill. ‘Well it has to be because you know I can’t drive. Let alone drive your Audi, it’s a fucking monster.’
‘Just do it now. I know you can drive, you’re just not very good at it, that’s all.’
‘Wow, nice. Look, I’m not going anywhere until I know what’s going on.’
I could tell he wanted to shake me. It was a very familiar tone.
He said, ‘I was working and it didn’t go according to plan, OK? Mark isn’t here, so I need you to come and pick me up.’
‘From a job?’ I swallowed. ‘Seriously, you want me to pick you up from a job?’
‘Daisy, I’ve been stabbed with a fucking potato peeler. Now shut the fuck up and get in the car!’
My first instinct was to laugh because it had to be a joke. But it wasn’t because Nic just went quiet and I had to take my feet off the coffee table and take an unsteady step towards the bedroom. ‘Um… what?’
‘I thought he was dead. He wasn’t. He got his hands on a fucking potato peeler on his way down.’
‘Where are you? You sound… OK?’
‘I don’t think it hit anything too important but I don’t want to see what happens if I sit in this pool of fucking blood all night. I haven’t pulled it out yet in case I start haemorrhaging or… well, you’re not stupid.’
‘So you’re just sat in this guy’s kitchen?’
‘Yes, I’m in his kitchen but I can’t leave, I took the tube here.’
Now I wanted to cry. My fear of picking Nic up from a dead man’s house equalled my fear of driving through central London. ‘I can’t. Nic, I can’t. I can’t drive!’
‘Daisy just—’
‘No, I can’t do it!’
‘There’s no one else! Mark isn’t fucking here!’
‘Oh fuck!’ Tears sprang to my eyes. ‘You fucking cunt!’
‘You can call me as many names as you like when you get here.’
He was so fucking unapologetic.
‘Can you…? OK, fuck, can you at least stay on the line while I’m in the car?’
‘No, my battery’s low and you’ll do better without the distraction. I’m gonna hang up now, but the front door isn’t locked. I didn’t shut it when…’ He hesitated, to take a breath, and it was the first time any trace of pain crept into his voice. ‘I didn’t shut it. I didn’t plan on being here this long.’
I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was rooted to the spot with disbelief.
‘Well… OK, I’ll see you in a fucking bit then.’
I couldn’t stop time and delay the next few hours for ever.
This was Mark’s job. It was him who took Nic’s emergency calls and I couldn’t even fathom making it to the car without going to pieces. Those two were totally desensitized to violence and I’d never seen a dead body in real life. I’d never seen how much blood could leak out of a punctured artery. I didn’t fucking want to. I’d never wanted to for a second.
I went into the bedroom and dropped the towel.
What did you wear to pick up your boyfriend from a crime scene that he’d created?
I settled on a pair of jeans that I didn’t mind never wearing again, and a black hoodie.
My hair was still wet.
I could feel my heartbeat in my face, in my stomach.
Nic’s car keys were in the bedside table.
I picked them up. They fell from my trembling hands and I burst into tears.
*
There was one deep lesion down the side of the silver Audi. But there was only the one by the time I parked some way down Bond Street. It was an achievement considering I’d spent the entire drive screaming.
Shivering as my hair drew the chill to my neck, I got out of the car and started wandering down the road. Inside one of these houses was a fucking horror show and I was entering stage right. I’d brought the first aid kit that we kept below the kitchen sink, which at least showed that I was thinking straight.
73, 75, 77…
People were around, arriving home, walking past in small groups of friends. But no one was watching me.
I walked up to the house and gave the door a nudge with my foot.
Slipping inside and shutting it quickly behind me, I found myself in a strange hallway. It was nondescript, painted blue. There was a coat stand upon which Nic had hung his coat before murdering the occupant.
‘Nic?’ I called, choked up.
‘Thank fuck, I thought that was you.’
I half shut my eyes as I pushed open the door at the end of the hall, but even with blurred vision I could make out the blood on the floor.
‘Daisy.’
I clapped a hand over my eyes to block out the scene and Nic repeated, ‘Daisy, come on. Just look at me. Don’t look at all that shit. Just focus on me.’
His voice was weaker than usual.
The tap was dripping frantically. It said a lot about the state of him that Nic hadn’t got up to turn it off.
I opened my eyes and stared at him, but it wasn’t enough. No one was blinkered enough to block out a dead body when it was in their field of vision. It was slumped against the cupboards like Nic was. To me it looked like a cartoon; white and puffy like the Marshmallow Man.
Stay Puft, I thought.
I began laughing hysterically, and Nic didn’t seem surprised.
He was sat up, hugging himself with his right arm.
But he was alive.
‘That’s quite a normal reaction,’ he said.
‘It… he looks like Stay Puft.’
He frowned.
A couple of tears fell. ‘The marshmallow man. And I scratched your car!’
‘That’s fine, don’t worry about it. Come here.’ He beckoned at me.
I took a few steps and reached out across the pool of red to grab his hand. The blood on his skin had dried. He smiled at me. In a moment, the shock gave way to numb and I thought I could probably do this. It wasn’t so bad. Then the numb became nausea.
The man’s throat had been gashed, along with some stab wounds to his chest. He’d been wearing a red Snoopy T-shirt.
‘Come on, I knew you could do it. Help me up.’
‘Do you need me to…’ I shook the first aid kit.
‘No, I just need to get to the car.’
‘OK.’ I took another step and watched blood soak into my red Nikes. ‘How do you want to—’
‘Just stay there. I won’t put all my weight on you, I promise.’ He shifted a little, dragging on my hand, and pushed back against the cupboards to find his feet.
I was surprised by how much his pain affected me. Maybe this was love; being willing to do fucked-up shit like this. That was the first time the possibility of love had sprung to mind around Nic. A dead man in a red Snoopy T-shirt brought us closer than we’d ever been.
He put one of his arms around my shoulders and I said, ‘What was the deal with this guy? You’ve never been this… shit.’
‘I thought he was dead but as I was leaving he grabbed the nearest thing and just went for me. Fucking lucky he wasn’t more ambitious with his choice of weapon.’ He laughed darkly. ‘I got complacent.’
‘No, I mean why did you have to kill him?’
Nic tried to shrug and put us both off balance on our way out. ‘I don’t know. I don’t always ask.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ronnie
‘Look.’
Eli nodded at some indeterminate spot in the distance.
My sunglasses cast everything in a glow that was both golden and completely blinding. I’d paid about two hundred quid for them as well, a price that seemed justified only by their aesthetic; because they sure as fuck didn’t help me see anything.
‘What?’
‘Hitcher.’
I took the glasses off and let my eyes adjust to the expanse of beige dust and the odd skeletal tree. He was right. A stick-like speck on our windscree
n grew into a fully formed man, with his arm outstretched into the road, thumb up. A large brown bag was on the ground beside him.
Eli slowed the car.
‘You’re not seriously thinking about picking him up,’ I said, unable to hide my incredulity.
‘Why not? We could just find out where he’s going.’
‘He could be a fucking murderer or something.’
He snorted and gave me a pointed look, as the car slowed and slowed.
I sighed. ‘OK, fine, I get you.’
We pulled over and Eli leant out of his window. ‘Where you headed?’
‘St Louis, but you don’t have to take me the whole way.’
The guy was Australian. He was also pretty weird-looking, even for someone being picked up in the arse-end of no-named outback, with no discernible signs of humanity in sight. He had the overly trusting brown eyes of a four-year-old, staring out from a lumbering panda-like body. He was wearing a leather hide jacket, smart trousers and small, round, John Lennon-style glasses. His hair was dark and pulled back into a ponytail.
Eli exchanged a glance with me.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Jimmy.’
He looked like an Indiana Jones villain.
‘Yeah, come on, we’re stopping in St Louis for a bit.’ Eli unlocked the back doors and smiled.
Jimmy picked up his bag, which looked to be made of the same dead animal as his jacket, and slung it into the back before clambering in. He grinned at us over his glasses.
‘Really nice of you guys, thanks.’
‘No worries.’ Eli started driving again. ‘What were you doing all the way out here?’
‘Oh, just wandering.’
‘Were you in Bloomington or something? There a ranch out here?’
‘Yeah, yeah. Was staying with a friend. Nice to meet you guys, by the way. You’re English, that’s wild!’ He thrust a huge palm through the middle of our seats. ‘What are your names?’
‘Mark,’ I replied, reaching back to give the hand a shake.
Eli did the same.
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