by Kevin Brooks
I couldn’t stand it.
I put the cashcard back in the bureau, went to my room and closed all the curtains. Then I got into bed, pulled the duvet over my head and waited for the rain to stop.
I wasn’t expecting Alex until later that evening so it was a pleasant surprise to hear the doorbell ring just after six o’clock. Even through the fluted glass in the front door her face was beautiful. Beautiful in distortion, like an angel in a hall of mirrors. I was smiling to myself as I opened the door – and then Dean stepped out from behind the wall, grinning, and my smile vanished.
‘Hey, Pigman.’
I stared at his unhealthy white skin, his baggy eyes, his stupid ponytail hanging down from his stupid fat head. I stared at his motorbike jacket, shiny black leather, too-clean, too-new, and his black leather trousers, baggy at the knees. I stared at the big black motorcycle helmet dangling from his hand, swinging gently, streetlights reflecting in its dark shine.
I stared at Alex. Dressed, like Dean, in black leather, with a crash helmet in her hand. How could you? I thought. How could you?
She looked down at her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Martyn.’
What? What? Sorry? What do you mean, sorry? Sorry? Sorry?
Dean stepped up to the door and I went to close it.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you,’ he said.
The sound of his voice made me sick.
‘He knows,’ said Alex.
‘What?’
‘He knows, Martyn. About your dad.’
Something uncontrollable welled up inside me. Like a hurricane. A whirlwind of unwanted emotions. She’d betrayed me. She, Alex. Alex. She’d betrayed me. Me. Can you imagine that? Can you feel it?
Dean whistled a low whistle, shook his head and grinned a cocky grin. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘Kids today, I don’t know. No respect for their elders.’
Alex was staring at me now, her eyes begging me to understand. And, strangely, I did. In an instant. I understood. She was scared. But not of me. Of him. She was scared of Dean. We were still in this together. Me and Alex.
Something inside me clicked off and the hurricane retreated.
I stepped back and opened the door.
‘You’d better come in.’
‘This is ridiculous, Martyn. All of it. It’s ridiculous …’
The mini-tape recorder whirred quietly on the kitchen table. I listened, dumbstruck, to the sound of Alex’s voice.
‘You can’t go on like this. You’ve got to call the police. You can’t just pretend that nothing’s happened.’
And then the sound of my own voice; oddly unfamiliar.
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘Oh, come on. Nobody’s going to blame you for your dad’s death. It was an accident. You didn’t mean it. The police will understand that. All you’ve got to do is tell them what happened.’
Dean smiled and pressed the fast forward button. I stared, transfixed, as the tape recorder’s tiny wheels whizzed around. I heard the scrape of a match and looked up as Dean lit a cigarette.
‘Want one?’ he said.
I didn’t answer. The smell of the smoke reminded me of Dad. The tape played on.
‘Maybe we could just put him somewhere.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just put him somewhere. Somewhere he won’t be found.’
‘Put him somewhere? What do you mean? Put him where?’
‘I don’t know. Anywhere. A river, lake, in the woods. A gravel pit.’
A long silence.
Then: ‘You are joking, aren’t you? I mean, even if you did put him somewhere, someone’s bound to find him sooner or later.’
‘Probably.’
‘So what’s the point?’
‘He’s a drunk, Alex. Was a drunk. It wasn’t unusual for him to go off drinking for days at a time and not come back.’
‘So?’
‘So all we have to do is get rid of the body somewhere, then, in a day or two, I’ll call the police and tell them Dad’s been missing since Wednesday. I’ll just say he went out in the evening and never came back. Even if they do find him, they won’t suspect me, will they? I’m just a kid …’
I reached across the table and pressed the Stop button.
‘There’s plenty more,’ said Dean. Cigarette smoke trailed languidly from his wide nostrils.
I looked across at Alex, standing by the window with her head bowed.
‘Alex?’
She looked up, sad eyes glistening. ‘He bugged my bag.’
‘What?’
‘A listening device. From the Gadget Shop. He put it in my bag. Yesterday. He taped us talking … everything.’ She was close to tears.
‘Everything?’
She nodded.
Dean reached into his pocket and dropped a little electronic, buggy thing on the table – black plastic, about the size of a 5p coin, with a tiny metal grill on one side. ‘It’s got a range of two miles,’ he said, ‘I linked up the receiver to a cassette machine.’ He picked up the bug and turned it over in his hand, smiling a self-satisfied smile. ‘Good, eh?’
‘Why?’ I asked him.
He stared at me across the table. There was something unsettling in his eyes. Something unbalanced.
‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘I was curious, that’s why. You and Alex and your cosy little night-time chats. I just wondered what you got up to, that’s all. Know what I mean?’ He turned to Alex. ‘You wouldn’t tell me about your little Pigman, would you, Al?’
‘It’s none of your business, Dean, you don’t own me.’
He tapped the tape recorder and laughed. ‘I do now.’
‘What do you want?’ I asked him.
He put the tape recorder in his pocket, stood up, and drew on his cigarette. ‘All in good time, Piggy.’
He was tall, nearly six feet, but stooped, as if his head weighed too much. I watched him straighten out his ponytail.
‘Where’s the body?’ he asked.
‘In the front room.’
‘Show me.’ The corner of his mouth twitched as he spoke, the tiniest of tics, and his left eyelid fluttered in reaction.
I led him into the front room and stepped aside to let him see.
He nodded at the shape beneath the sheet. ‘Is that it?’
‘You want a look?’
He rubbed nervously at his jaw. ‘You do it. Lift the sheet.’
‘Scared?’
‘Listen, Pig,’ he hissed, jabbing a long-nailed finger at me. ‘You do what I tell you and you just might get out of this in one piece. But you mess me about …’ He tapped the tape recorder in his pocket. ‘You mess me about and you’ll end up in the shit. Get it? And her, too. In the shit.’ He sniffed. ‘All right?’
I said nothing.
‘Lift the sheet,’ he said.
I walked across to the fireplace, bent down and lifted a corner of the sheet. A pale dead head stared up at the ceiling. The black hair was dry and dull now, the sheen of oil dried, evaporated, gone. It wasn’t Dad any more, it wasn’t even a person. It was just a dead thing, just a thing. I glanced at Dean. His pasty face was even pastier than usual, toneless and sallow. Even Dad looked healthier than that. A secret smile flickered in my mind as I squatted there. Look at him, I thought, he’s nothing. A ponytailed zombie. Glazed, washy blue eyes, dark pupils shrunk to almost nothing, small black holes floating in a watery nowhere … he can’t hurt me. I stared at him, hearing my voice in my head. You can’t hurt me. You’ve got no strength, no purity. All you’ve got is cruelty and a streak of dumb cunning. That’s not enough, that’s not nearly enough. You know what your trouble is, Dean? You don’t understand. You don’t get it. You think that any of this really matters? You think I care what happens? To me, to anybody, to anything? I know it. I know. I know that nothing matters. That’s what makes me strong. Strength in my own pure weakness.
No, I thought, you can’t hurt me. But let’s play the game anyway.
I looked deeply into
his eyes and smiled.
‘Cover it up,’ he said.
I looked down at Dad, then back at Dean. ‘I think he likes you,’ I said.
‘Cover it up!’
I let the sheet drop. Dean turned and went back into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the room. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to digest what I’d found in myself. It was good. A good feeling. Like I’d found my true self at last. What I was. I went over to the window and pulled back the curtain and gazed up into the night sky. No stars fell. The invisible piper was quiet this evening. There was nothing there, just the swoop of telephone wires hanging over the roofs of houses and a cold sliver of yellow moon. I nodded: nothing much at all, just the way it should be.
Alex had been crying, her eyes blurred and red. She was sitting at the kitchen table pulling a paper tissue to pieces. Dean was at the sink splashing cold water onto his face.
‘It’s all right,’ I told Alex. She looked up and I smiled. ‘Really,’ I said. ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry.’
Dean turned, drying his face on a tea towel. ‘Shut up, Pig. Sit down.’
I sat down. Dean lit a cigarette and blew smoke from the side of his mouth. Trying to look tough. What he looked like was a twat.
‘I want the money,’ he said.
I looked into his eyes, waiting for him to go on. He looked back. I looked at Alex. Alex sniffed. I looked at Dean.
‘I want the money,’ he repeated. ‘The thirty thousand.’
‘I haven’t got it,’ I said.
He curled his lip. ‘Listen, Pig, it’s simple. You give me the money, I give you the tape. If you don’t give me the money, I give the tape to the police. Understand?’
‘I understand. But I haven’t got the money.’
‘Don’t give me that crap,’ he sneered, taking the tape recorder from his pocket. He wound it forward again, then pressed Play. My tinny voice came on in mid-sentence.
‘… thirty thousand pounds. I’m rich. I’ll buy you a new car.’
‘But the money’s in the bank, in your dad’s account.’
‘I’ve got his chequebook and cashcard … I’m sure we can work something out.’
‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’
Click.
A smug grin creased Dean’s face.
‘All right,’ I admitted. ‘But I can’t withdraw the whole lot, can I? I can’t get—’
‘That’s your problem,’ he said.
‘How am I supposed to—’
‘You’re not listening, Pig. I want the money. I don’t care how you get it.’ He flipped out the mini-cassette. ‘See this?’
I nodded.
‘Alex?’
Alex sniffed tearfully and looked at him.
‘This,’ he went on, waving the cassette in his hand, ‘this will put you both away. This will ruin your lives. It’s yours for thirty thousand pounds.’
‘When?’ I said.
‘When what?’
‘When do you want the money?’
The question surprised him. To tell you the truth, it surprised me. A part of me felt as if I didn’t know what I was doing, but another part – deep within me – was thinking things through. I was a passenger in my own mind. Passenger, driver. It’s all right, the driver was saying, just leave it to me. I know what I’m doing. Look at him. I looked at Dean. See? He hasn’t got a clue.
It was true. Dean was fiddling nervously with his ponytail, swishing it about all over the place, trying to think of what to say. Loose strands of lank blond hair floated to the floor.
‘Monday,’ he said, eventually. ‘Noon, Monday.’
‘OK,’ I said.
Dean and Alex both stared at me.
‘But—’ began Alex.
‘It’s all right,’ I said.
‘Right then,’ said Dean.
‘Right,’ I said.
‘Monday.’
‘Monday.’
‘Noon.’
‘Noon.’
‘Right. I’ll be here, Monday, at noon.’
I nodded.
‘You’d better have the money.’
I nodded again.
‘Right then.’ He dropped his cigarette to the floor and stepped on it, then picked up his crash helmet and headed for the door. I glanced at the flattened cigarette. It was disgusting. He was disgusting.
‘Dean?’ I said.
He turned. ‘What?’
‘How many copies of the tape are there?’
He paused. ‘What?’
‘You’ve made copies of the tape?’
‘I’m not stupid.’
‘No.’ I watched his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t come round here, on your own, with the only copy, would you? That would be stupid.’
His mouth twitched as he tried to laugh. ‘I’ve got copies, don’t worry about that.’
I looked out of the window. It was quiet and empty outside, nothing moved. I glanced at the cutlery jug by the cooker – wooden spoons, potato masher, roasting fork, carving knives. I felt Alex’s eyes watching me. We looked at each other. I saw uncertainty in her face. Fear, perhaps. Or was it something else? Understanding? A silent suggestion?
I turned to Dean. ‘I want all the copies.’
‘When I get the money, you’ll get the tapes.’
‘How will I know?’
‘What?’
‘How will I know you’ve not kept a copy?’
‘You’ll just have to trust me,’ he smirked.
I stared at the floor. I stared at the dead filaments of hair littering the clean linoleum. My mind was remarkably clear. I could see all the possibilities, I understood the probabilities, I’d calculated the odds. I felt alive, as if this was something I was born to.
I raised my eyes. ‘See you later, Dean.’
He hesitated, trying to think of something clever to say, but nothing came to him. So he just sniffed a couple of times, flicked his ponytail again, and then left. I looked across at Alex and smiled and together we listened to the irritating buzz of his motorbike as it started up and raced away. We listened until the sound had disappeared into the night.
‘Bastard,’ Alex whispered.
‘True,’ I replied.
‘I’m sorry, Martyn.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘I knew what he was like.’
‘Well …’
She half-smiled. ‘You told me so.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
She stood up, ran her fingers through her hair, then sat down again. ‘What are we going to do now? It won’t work. Your plan won’t work any more. We can’t get rid of the body then pretend we don’t know anything about it when it’s found. Not now Dean knows. It won’t work. What are we going to do?’
I made some tea, and then I told her what we were going to do.
Later, after Alex had left, I went back into the kitchen with a pair of tweezers and carefully collected the loose hairs that had fallen from Dean’s head and placed them in an envelope. Then I looked for the cigarette he’d extinguished on the floor and found it squashed beside the chair leg and I placed that in the envelope too.
Usually, I think a lot in bed. Just before dropping off to sleep, when the silence and darkness of the night are absolute, that’s when I think best. No noise, nothing to look at, no distractions, just pure thought. But that night, even though there were a thousand things to think about, I was asleep within minutes. A lovely, quiet drifting away into the oblivion of sleep. A journey into nothing. The demons I’d invited into my head the night before were gone. There was nothing there to bother me. Nothing.
I slept a long and dreamless sleep.
Friday
‘I don’t like it, Martyn.’
It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Alex and I were standing over Dad’s body, the sheet removed. His staring eyes were nothing like eyes.
‘It’s nothing to be scared of,’ I said. ‘Just imagine he’s asleep.’
‘Not dea
d, just sleeping.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what it says on gravestones – not dead, just sleeping.’
‘A dirty trick,’ I said.
She laughed nervously.
I stooped down and took the body under the arms, testing the weight. It was heavy. Very heavy. ‘I’ll take this end,’ I said. ‘You take his feet.’
Alex just stood there, wiping her hands on the back of her jeans.
I looked up at her. ‘The sooner we do it, the sooner it’s over.’
She was breathing heavily. I waited. She rubbed the back of her neck, looked to one side, wiped her hands once more, then took a deep breath and crouched down.
‘This might take some time,’ I said.
And it did.
Dad wasn’t that tall, and apart from his beer belly and his overall flabbiness, he wasn’t really that fat either. But now he was dead he weighed a ton, and it took us the best part of an hour to get him up the stairs. He was a bit stiff as well, and his arms and legs kept getting caught in the banisters, which didn’t help. But we got there in the end. We carried, we dragged, we pushed, we shoved, until eventually we got him into his bedroom and laid him out on the bed.
‘Tea?’ I suggested, rubbing the small of my back.
Alex said nothing, just nodded, out of breath.
The view from the kitchen window hadn’t changed. Grey skies hanging over the tops of houses. Dull triangles decorated with dead chimney pots and television aerials. Right-angles. Broken gutters. Ugly white satellite dishes.
‘Martyn?’
I watched the curved black trace of a crow as it arced across the morning sky.
‘Martyn?’
‘What?’
‘Are we bad?’
I swallowed a mouthful of tea. Alex was idly tracing a finger round the rim of her mug.
‘Depends what you mean by bad,’ I answered.
‘Bad. Evil. Wrong.’