‘Roman Katz? When I can. He seems distant lately.’
‘Aren’t Russians generally distant?’
‘No. No, the opposite. Coming from a country where you have to hide what you are, that makes you guarded. But they’re not distant people. They’re abrasive, grounded. They’re the people I like speaking to most, actually.’
‘But Katz seems distant?’
He fell silent for a while. I noticed that under his eye, along one cheekbone, he had some glitter smudged into his skin.
‘I know it’s hard to believe,’ he said, raising his eyebrows, ‘but I’ve been broken up with a couple of times. Just a couple. You get to recognize the signs, months in advance sometimes. You realize you’re choosing your words around them more, worrying more, and you’re not even sure why until it ends and you realize you’d felt it coming.’
I’d felt it coming with Nic. He was right. Even if it felt like you’d been pushed out of a moving car, break-ups were never a surprise.
‘Have you ever killed an ex? Or like, castrated them or something?’
He grinned, checking the people around us. ‘No, shh.’
‘You must have been tempted?’
‘It’s less of an urge when you know you actually could kill them.’
‘I always thought Nic was gonna kill me. I had nightmares about it all the time. It’s actually the reason I’m not sleeping that well…’
‘Why? Did he ever give you the idea?’
‘No, it’s just… who he is. Sometimes the only way I could ever see us breaking up was with him killing me. I get the impression that’s how most of his relationships end, especially after whatshername.’
‘Clare. His boss’s wife. He didn’t kill her though.’
‘Yeah, I know. To be honest, the only person I could see him staying with for ever is you.’
The atmosphere shifted, almost imperceptibly. I went up to the counter to get a croissant.
When I came back, Mark pushed the rest of his tea away.
‘Have you guys always been platonic?’ I asked, unsure why I kept pursuing the subject.
He went to say something but I cut him off, groaning, ‘I can literally see you about to say something about actual Plato. I have read his book about “man-love”, OK, because you were the one who lent it to me. Just answer the damn question without being an arse.’
‘You know me quite well.’ He laughed, flicking crumbs off his jeans. ‘Nothing sexual has ever happened between us, no.’
‘But?’
‘But nothing.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘That you’re in love with him.’
‘So are you,’ he replied, without hesitation.
I nodded. That was a satisfactory response.
*
What was the statistic? Two women a week killed by a current or former male partner? One every three days? So today it was me, instead of someone else.
Stupid fucking shit that goes through your head when you’re about to die.
I die the same way every time, thumbs crushing my throat, spitting blood down my front, trying to say, ‘Please, please, please…’ but not able to say anything. And crying. The crying was fucking unforgivable.
That’s how I wake up eventually; crying.
The fucking worst.
And these nightmares started way before me and Nic broke up.
I started smoking a massive joint before I went to bed, and that sometimes kept them away.
It made getting up in the morning traumatic. But I figured that’s what MDMA was for.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ronnie
I took one of Cathal’s Ormus capsules before we got in the car the following morning, but didn’t feel anything. Ingest white powder and you usually got some sort of buzz, maybe a loved-up or anxious sort of emotion at worst. But no, nothing.
It didn’t bode well for the spoon, which I’d given to Cathal with the brief challenge, ‘This is my spoon, make it gold for me.’ It hadn’t been the spoon from the hotel either, which I’d realised most likely wasn’t made of solid silver. The spoon I’d given him had been bought from a rundown antique shop next to a cafe where I’d stopped for coffee.
I didn’t mention either the Ormus or the spoon to Eli, but I was disappointed. I made a mental note to take a few more later.
Saxon didn’t meet us, but the receptionist – a boy this time – told us Penny was waiting in the same place we’d spoken with him the day before.
A male receptionist made more sense, I thought. I wouldn’t want to work here if I was a woman, given the place’s history.
Penny was in her forties, of Mexican heritage, maybe Puerto Rican. There was something in her features reminiscent of Luiz. She gave us a nervous curtsy instead of shaking our hands, and we refrained from sitting until she did.
‘Mr Saxon said you wanted to speak about Trent?’ she said, hands clasped in her lap. ‘You are friends?’
‘Yeah, old friends.’ I nodded.
She seemed disbelieving. ‘Trent never spoke about friends.’
‘We haven’t spoken for years,’ Eli said, almost whispering, as if he was afraid of scaring her away. ‘He’s disappeared and no one seems to know where he is. We’re very worried about him. Did he mention anything to you about what he was doing here or where he was going?’
‘He liked to help me clean his room. He didn’t need to, but he said it made him feel guilty watching me work while he did nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘He never said anything about why he was living here. People usually choose here because they have nowhere else to go.’
‘Did you find him strange?’ I asked. ‘Did he ever act strange or say anything out of the ordinary?’
Her eyes slid sideways. ‘Um…’
‘Did he ever say anything that scared you?’ I asked, rephrasing.
‘He didn’t scare me.’ But she looked as though she wanted to say something else.
We both stayed silent, watching her decide what to say.
‘He didn’t scare me, but sometimes he would say things I didn’t like. But as soon as I told him to stop saying these things, he’d apologize.’
‘What did he say that you didn’t like?’
Her hand went to her neck and I realized she was wearing a silver crucifix.
‘He would say things about Satan.’
That was it. That was all she offered.
‘Like what?’ Eli pressed.
‘I don’t want to say them.’
‘Did he have a Bible in his room?’ I asked. ‘There was a Bible in his room, even though you apparently don’t provide them here.’
She seemed to shrink. She touched the crucifix, smoothed her hair, looked away, looked back at us and said, ‘Please don’t tell Mr Saxon. I left Trent a Bible in his room, to help him. I thought he needed it. I think it is still there, he didn’t take it with him and I left it there, just in case.’
Eli’s eyes widened for a moment.
‘He said the Cecil is a gateway to hell,’ she said, catching her breath as if the very words might snatch her from salvation.
‘What?’
‘A gateway to hell,’ she repeated, with fearful eyes. ‘He said, when he was talking one day, that this was a place of baptism, where sinners would be cleansed or punished.’
I thought of the girl in the water tank and my stomach turned.
Eli glanced at the eight-pointed star on the ceiling and thought I didn’t notice.
‘Do you believe him?’ I asked, not liking where this interview was going. ‘A lot of bad stuff has happened here. Doesn’t it scare you?’
I wondered if she’d drunk any water from the taps while the girl had been in there, or whether Saxon had. I was surprised anyone would ever take a job here after that. They should burn the place down, consecrate the ground and be done with it.
‘At work I’m not scared,’ she said, indicating her head at the entrance.
‘I have worked here for seven years and nothing bad has happened to me. The men outside. They are the ones who scare me.’
‘And Trent didn’t say anything about where he was going?’
‘Not to me, no. Talk to Robeson. He works on the door sometimes. Sometimes Trent would talk to the men outside, but I don’t know which ones. The… bums, Mr Saxon calls them. I don’t like that word.’
‘The ones from Skid Row?’
She pursed her lips at the very mention of the name.
I didn’t ask anything else.
Eli must have also sensed that we wouldn’t get much more out of her, because he leant forwards, his hands linked on his knees. ‘Thanks, Penny. You’ve been really helpful. Is Mr Saxon in today? We were hoping to talk to him about seeing some of the video footage you may have of Trent?’
‘No, he’s not.’ She shifted. ‘I need to go to work now.’
‘No, right, of course you can.’
Eli gave her leave to go.
When she was far enough away, small heels clicking on the luminous floor, I turned to him.
‘I don’t wanna hang around in LA for days.’
‘I have a feeling Saxon was counting on that. He could tell we weren’t staying.’ Eli pursed his lips, thinking.
‘I don’t suppose it would look good if it got out, the hotel staff divulging private information about guests.’
‘What? Compared to the glowing publicity of a girl’s body ending up in the water tank and five or six decades of murders and suicides?’
‘You make a good point.’
He swivelled and watched the reception desk. ‘We could see if this Robeson is in today?’
‘If he’s not, we have to go.’
The boy from behind reception was approaching us, thick eyebrows lowered, making everything he did seem mysterious. He made a beckoning motion with his fingers, which raised the two of us from our chairs. He was clutching a small package down by his side, which he held out to me when I reached him first.
‘Mr Saxon put this aside for you. He said to make sure you got it.’
It was a wad of letters, postcards and scribbles, about two inches thick and tied with rubber bands. The piece of lined notepaper on the top read Trent left these behind. Maybe you can find a use for them. E.S.
Eli almost snatched it out of my hands. ‘Did he say anything else?’
‘No, that’s it.’
‘No CCTV? Video?’
The boy shook his head.
‘Wicked. We’ll take it.’ I started to drag Eli towards the exit, muttering, ‘Let’s not push our luck now. We can always come back later.’
*
Both Cathal and Luiz were out when we got back. I spent most of the afternoon with my laptop in the garden shed thinking about maybe Skyping my kids, but mostly researching the relevance of water and corpses in Satanism.
I cast my eyes over some of the equipment, trying to gauge how Cathal was coming along with turning the stolen spoon into gold, but there was no sign of it. His alchemy appliances looked like customized microwaves. Maybe I should have marked the spoon in some way, so that he wouldn’t just swap it for another, but it was too late now.
I had a text from Mark Chester, back in the UK, asking when he should fly to Chicago to meet me. The idea of looking for Seven seemed distant now, almost irrelevant, compared to looking for Trent. Irritating, considering that the former directly concerned me and the latter didn’t.
It was my lack of concern that was the problem. I hated talking to Noel when he was drinking. I hated Seven with such a visceral repulsion that I didn’t want to see her again, even if it was to kill her. Daisy… Daisy was just another problem. I wasn’t yet sure why.
I took another Ormus capsule and dry-swallowed it.
Give me a few days, I texted back.
We don’t have a few days. I’ll have to meet you there, came the insolent reply.
I knew he was right, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I’d rather stay here in the shed, avoiding everyone for ever. The idea of never seeing any of them again. Well, it didn’t fill me with dread…
Putting my mobile down, I clicked on one of the articles I’d found. Four men in Bangladesh had been arrested in 2010 for murdering a bricklayer, cutting off his head and burning it in a kiln. Apparently the owners of their business had wanted to produce redder bricks, and a fortune-teller had told them a human sacrifice would ensure the desired colour. Apparently neither the owners nor the fortune-teller had ever been found. I wondered how easy it would be to convince someone to do something like that if they were desperate and uneducated.
It couldn’t be hard. After all, I’d been taking capsules full of God-knows-what on the word of a man who said they could cure cancer and turn metals into gold.
There was a tap on the door and I started.
Eli stood there, looking uneasy.
‘Anything interesting in Trent’s pile of crap?’ I asked.
‘I haven’t looked yet, I’ve been trying to get hold of Cam but he’s not available.’ He shifted. ‘There’s two guys here to see Cathal.’
‘Where are they?’
‘In the living room. They just came in.’
‘Did you tell them he isn’t here?’
‘I haven’t told them anything.’
We both paused. I felt my pockets, remembered I’d left my gun in the car, and slowly followed Eli out into the garden and back up towards the house.
‘Are you carrying?’ I asked.
‘No, it’s upstairs.’
‘Do they look dangerous?’
‘They don’t look chill.’
We stepped into the empty kitchen. There was a magnetic knife rack against the wall, a metal strip with about eight knives stuck to it. Before I could venture near it the two men came in. They were wearing suits, like they were in the fucking Matrix. They were both also conspicuously blond.
‘Cathal Sheedy?’
Without even glancing at each other, I replied, ‘Yes?’
Their hands went simultaneously to their waistbands and I dived for the knife rack. My fingers curled around the handle of a wimpy chopping blade and then I was in a crouch. I looked up, forearm raised, and everyone was on the floor. Eli must have rushed both of them. I leapt to my feet and rammed the blade through the chin of the one nearest to me.
A jet of blood hit my eyes.
‘Fuck! Fuck!’
I dropped the knife, or left it sticking out of the guy’s face. I didn’t know. I swatted blood off my fingers, feeling around for the sink, everything stinging like hell. Then I remembered my shirt and rubbed the sleeves across my face.
Eli came into focus, his knee across a man’s neck. The other one was dead and the knife was on the floor not far from his hand; he must have pulled it out of his chin before he died.
‘Eli… you…’ I pointed at him, trying to wipe more blood out of my eyes.
He reached up and realized his ear was bleeding.
We both looked at the ceiling and saw two bullet holes.
I hadn’t heard the shots being fired.
I checked myself, but appeared to be fine.
Eli returned his attention to the man beneath him. ‘Why do you want Cathal Sheedy dead?’
The man glanced at me.
‘I’m not Cathal, genius,’ I said.
‘Then why…’ The man choked. ‘Why did you say you were?’
‘To see what you’d do.’ I went to the sink and ran the cold tap, dashing some water into my eyes.
‘Then it’s none of your business.’
Eli searched the man’s pockets and the inside of his jacket, tucked the gun into the back of his trousers and stood up. ‘Kinda is our business now, I’m afraid, and we can make you talk to us, you know.’
I started and yelled, ‘Fuck, get him!’
But it was too late. I saw the man’s hand go to his mouth, and by the time Eli reached him he had started convulsing.
Eli recoiled, and we
watched as he went into a violent seizure, eyes bulging, rolling back in his head, before he went still. It looked like a terrible way to die, veins and eyes straining.
‘That escalated quickly,’ Eli remarked.
‘Fuck’s sake. What the fuck is Cathal gonna say when he gets back and finds this in his kitchen!’ I snapped. ‘We just fucking killed them, that’s not escalating! Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you? As if we haven’t got enough on our plates without…’ I gestured at the bodies.
I wasn’t sure why but I was angry with Eli for this. Regardless of what Cathal was mixed up in, I was irrationally certain this wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t brought us here.
He hadn’t reacted to any of it. Instead, he started examining the bodies.
He said, ‘I don’t think Cathal’ll be as surprised as you think, if he’s the type of guy who has two professionals sent to kill him. They’re not run-of-the-mill thugs.’
‘Of course they’re not, they were carrying suicide pills. You know who carries those?’
‘Spies.’
‘Or soldiers.’ I ran the tap and rinsed my face again. ‘You know what, have you seen his kids’ rooms? They seem weird. What do we even know about Cathal apart from what Luiz has told us?’
‘You think Luiz knew about this?’
I gave him a shrug that said I don’t even fucking know.
‘I’m not cleaning this up,’ I said, somewhat stroppily.
Eli appeared to remember that his ear had been obliterated and tried to stem the flow, grimacing. It was only when he did that that I realized how much blood was collecting on his clothes.
‘I’m sure he’ll have a first aid kit somewhere,’ I said, thinking of the garden shed first, then hesitating. ‘You think…? No.’
‘What?’ He went to the sink, ran the tap and tried to awkwardly position his ear under it.
‘Doesn’t matter. Just thinking.’
Leaving him with his head in the sink, I went back to the shed to get my laptop. Once inside, all of Cathal’s equipment had taken on a more purposeful appearance. I opened and closed a couple of the drawers, but doubted he’d have left his stash of Ormus capsules in here.
He couldn’t be onto something, could he?
Ridiculous, I thought, as I searched for a first aid kit. People deserved to die for loads of plausible reasons; alchemy and curing cancer weren’t among them.
Road Kill Page 14