Decay Inevitable

by Conrad Williams

  He tried the phone even though he knew it couldn’t work. He was sitting on the floor of the kiosk, snot and tears dribbling into his mouth as quickly as he could lick them away. He raised his face to a boy in a school uniform slowly obscuring the glass space between them with a can of spray paint. The boy was looking down at him and shaking his head.

  MOTION. CHEKE FELT it rolling through her, under her. Warmth seeping into her. She sat next to Gleave who looked dead and grey, flickering in and out of the light that pulsed at the windows. She felt the anger drift off him in similar waves. One eye was lost to a slice of shadow; the other stared flatly at the back of Trantam’s head. She had flinched before the stinging rebuke Trantam had received.

  Cheke shifted in her seat, moving against Gleave, and was glad for the arm that enfolded her. The smell of his coat was almost animal. It reassured and encouraged her. She watched the houses stream by the window as they rushed to a place that Gleave had called home. She was like the colour that might otherwise play along these streets; she knew how to lose herself at night, become anonymous, although she couldn’t put her finger on where the knowledge came from, being unable to remember anything beyond what had happened in the last few hours. The illogicality of it distressed her only mildly. Her belly full, her head cushioned by the sublime beating of a friendly heart deep beneath this musky coat, she slept, and dreamed of her abilities as they quickened within her by the second; of what she would be capable when she woke. Of whom she would be capable.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: KITCHEN SYNC

  HE PREPARED A percolator of coffee while she bathed.

  “Don’t you want to know my name?”

  The flat was warm, if a little shabby, but the way her shoulders relaxed as she went in before him told him that if she had been feeling any anxiety it had dissipated at the sight of his sofa with a blanket thrown across it, or of the lamp on the table spilling warm colour across the wooden floor, the tired rug in front of the fire. How could anybody feel threatened when there was a picture on the wall of a view from Waterloo Bridge? Where was the danger in a flat where a bag of dolly mixtures was sitting on top of the fridge?

  “I’ll guess it. Give me five guesses.”

  He shared out the coffee and thought of the way she had stepped over the threshold of each room, her hand moving out to gently grasp the doorjamb, relaxing against the wood as though returning to a pose she had practised many times. Sean had stood behind her while she inspected the rooms. He liked the way he could see her eyelashes when she was in three-quarter profile; her short, brown hair and the fringe that flopped about her forehead; the blended, slightly plump curves of her cheekbones and mouth. She looked boyish and soft, but a hardness danced in her quick green eyes. He found himself wanting to show her his maps of cities from a hundred and fifty years ago and play her a piece of music that he adored in the hope that it would move her too.

  “Hannah?”

  “No.”

  Light bled from a deep crack between the bathroom door and its frame. Carrying her cup, he was halted by the movement of her naked figure across the gap. She was a blur of pink, the flurry that fills a moment of space, but she passed through his mind in intimate detail.

  “Fiona?”

  “No.”

  At the table in a kitchen with a tap that wouldn’t stop dripping, wrapped up in his towelling bathrobe, her hair slicked back, she sipped coffee and listened to him talk about London. It was nice to be in a room with a man and not have him want to wave his dick in her face. And then she surprised herself by opening up to him, telling him things that she could barely acknowledge to herself.

  “Mildred?”

  “Ugh. Piss off. No.”

  For the last six years, since her grandmother had suffered a stroke and needed to be cared for, she’d walked a rut into the backstreets of the town. If she thought about the reams of men and women that had paid her dirty money to sign off her body for a few hours, she’d go mad. So she never thought of them. Well, hardly. Sometimes they’d dip into her sleep, these none-faces, these black ghosts, bruising the meat that they’d hired for a while, emptying themselves across the map of her body, scattering seed across a barren land that could sustain nothing of any warmth or significance any more.

  “Isobel?”

  “No. Last chance.”

  Most of her friends were dead. She’d beaten the odds, staying alive on the streets for this long; life expectancy for prostitutes in the Northwest was dwindling all the time. Tonight it had seemed her turn had come. A saviour was rare, but she wondered how self-seeking his heroics might prove. She studied his face while he took up the conversational baton. He did not judge her; his face had not fallen when she revealed her true colours. It was a good face: angular and tough but something about his eyes and the shape of his lips hinted at vulnerability. It looked like a face that might cry while its owner was killing you.

  Sirens looped across the night. A police helicopter, its belly loaded with cameras, striped the night with an acid-white spotlight that stabbed into the ruined flesh of the town, picking over the remains like a glutton at the bones of a roast.

  “What’s in it for you then? What can you expect for saving me?”

  “There’s never anything in it for me,” Sean said, at last. “But I feel... I don’t know... some degree of responsibility for you. Perhaps because I feel nothing for myself.”

  “You don’t have to use chat-up lines, Sean. But it’s sweet of you to say so. Unfortunately, I don’t share your concern. I can take care of me better than anyone else, and if I get into trouble, that’s my look-out.”

  Sean nodded. “I’ll say goodnight then. If you need anything, give me a shout.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. He said: “Karen?” But she didn’t reply.

  Heading for the sofa, he watched her disappear into his bedroom. He thought: She doesn’t remember me at all...

  CHAPTER EIGHT: SURVIVAL INSTINCT

  WILL WAITED FOR three hours, lurking in a church graveyard and walking the aisles of an all-night supermarket, before he returned. He paused a little way up the street from Cumberland Mansions. At the front of the house, sitting in an ancient, beige Allegro, was a man he had never seen before. He was wearing a thick, tight-fitting blue jumper, and a floppy cricket cap. He was affecting nonchalance, reading a newspaper but regularly flicking his attention to the entry door. Round the back, on the fire escape, he spied a woman in a greatcoat, smoking a cigarette. She moved to flick the stub into a garden, and the grip of a pistol tucked into her waistband pushed its way into view.

  These two watching the front and back entrances might be police, but he found himself hanging back, reluctant to approach them. He wondered if they thought he might have killed his wife.

  Will returned to the main street. He didn’t know where he could go. What if the news told of a man on the run, capable of violence? How could his friends take him in? His friends were also Cat’s friends; there could be no chance of some sort of skewed loyalty here. Even his closest companions would shop him; it was what he would do in the same position.

  He caught a whiff of reefer, heard heavy, fast bass; a Saab parked up a sidestreet contained two teens watching the road. He knew them; they cruised around in their car late into the night, playing hip hop at full blast, or hung around outside coffee bars. Every time they saw his wife, one of them would smile and say: “Not long now, hey?”

  The driver wound down the window without looking at Will as he approached.

  “Want some blow?” he asked, softly. Now he did look. “Shit. Are you all right?”

  Will said, “No. I want you to burgle my house.”

  NOW PARKED ACROSS the way from Cumberland Mansions, Will watched from the car as the two kids – Known and Hot Badge – waited for the others they had phoned when Will had promised them it was no set-up and that they could keep what they could carry. All he wanted was a report on how the flat looked, and his coat and his wallet – untouched. Known had s
aid: “Let’s see what we can’t do for you.”

  “One more thing,” Will stipulated. “I want a weapon.”

  The man in the cricket cap was clearly bothered by the sudden build-up of youths and had risen to his feet while trying to maintain a disaffected air. Known and Hot Badge and their friends, three or four louche boys in denim jackets and baseball caps, ambled across the road and up the steps to the front door. Cricket cap was on his phone once the lock had been sprung. Will huddled in the car, trying not to think too much about what they might find in his flat. The heater roared, coaxing movement back to his frozen joints. He closed his eyes and realised he was shifting into a dream. How could he sleep? But he saw Cat there now, waving to him through the warp and weft of his thoughts. With a slight tremor of fear, as of someone giving up life because of a lack of anything left within it to care about, he succumbed to the depths and followed her.

  CHEKE HAD BEEN left in a stone room with a high window and a solid wooden door. A deep bath made of thick, frosted glass awaited her. The water was cold, but she had begun to understand how to alter herself to accommodate for temperature changes. She moved the blanket slightly and looked down at her body.

  Already she was losing her hold on her own identity, such as it could be after such a short time – that which mapped out the set of characteristics was being subtly differed and she could feel invisible fingers plucking at her, though mercifully the change was painless. After a while she’d begun to notice it wasn’t restricted to her interior. Her breasts were swelling, the nipples becoming darker, more pronounced. Her hips were growing rounder, her buttocks firmer. Three moist, puckered punctures buttoned her abdomen. A curious fingernail made the punctures shiver and relax, betraying a moist, pink velvety lining within. The woman who had provided her with her first real sustenance did not have anything remotely resembling this formation on her. Absorbing her, feeling her body pulverise under the juices she ejaculated, Cheke had pored over the woman’s face, her interest quickening when death settled and her features relaxed. The woman had a rind of colour to her eyes; a dip at the apex of her top lip; just one set of canine teeth. Subtle differences, but they were fascinating to Cheke, who was coming to grips with the slow play of limbs still apparently discovering their true shape. Her body seemed to be going through a variety of minute alterations. She had spent an hour transfixed by the undulation of her knuckles, which dissolved and reknitted themselves in a new configuration. She couldn’t understand the motive for this mischief in her flesh, but she welcomed the freshness it inspired; the gradual improvement in her movement and thought.

  She bathed, baptising this new body of hers. Faces she didn’t know (but seemed maddeningly familiar) loomed in the patterns of oil in the water, inspiring different levels of emotion. Hatred for this tired, ageing man; grief at the appearance of a woman with cataracts in her eyes; desire for a young man disfigured by scars almost beautiful in their symmetry. She realised with disappointment that these phantoms were somebody else’s memories, faces in the fire, tricking her into thinking they bore significance to her own life. She remained alone.

  Her hands made their acquaintance with the fresh geography of skin and muscle, the experience both like self-exploration and the touching of another. Still there existed that vestigial tremor at her core – it transmitted itself no matter where her fingers reached.

  “Why me?” she whispered.

  A car drew up outside. Even before its doors opened she could hear Gleave barking orders.

  She stepped from the bath and wrapped herself in a white towelling robe, the activity in her flesh reaching a new level of intensity. Her mouth filled with drool. A key in the lock. Only when the boy was pushed over the threshold did she realise the nature of its energy.

  The boy stared at her. Ice cream was slicked across his jaws. His hair sprang up stubbornly at his crown. The door snicked shut.

  The boy said, “Mummy?”

  “If it makes you happy,” she whispered.

  HE WOKE, FRUSTRATED, his heart pounding and his dick hard as a door handle. He had been unable to still Catriona. She had slipped in and out of focus, her words to him garbled, as though coming from a slightly detuned radio. Her smile was genuine enough, her mouth somehow super-real, Technicolor. He had been reaching to kiss her when she sank from view and he was unable to conjure her again.

  But this wasn’t the only reason for his revival. The slap of fast-moving footsteps had him blinking and scooting back in his seat as Known and his gang came pounding across the road. Behind them, Cricket cap had got out of the car and was standing uncertainly in the road, alternating his gaze between the heels of the burglars and the flapping entrance door.

  “Got enough stuff there?” Will asked, indicating the television and stereo equipment with which Known’s gang were laden.

  “Actually, we were thinking of going back for some more. Would you mind?”

  “I don’t care,” Will said. “Was... Cat there?”

  “No. Should she of been? This some kind of kinky trick to jazz up your sex life, then?”

  “Forget it. Did you get my wallet?”

  Hot Badge passed over the wallet, at pains to point out that nothing had been taken from it.

  “And there was something else?”

  Known pursed his lips. “I’m a bit miffed that you think of me as someone who carries small arms around in his pockets, but here... enjoy it.”

  Will took the gun. It seemed woefully small. “What ammo does it take?” he asked. “Caps?”

  “Funny.” A box of shells was passed over.

  “Is it easy to load?” Will twisted and turned the gun in his hand. It gleamed dully, like a snake’s skin, under the courtesy light.

  “Shit, mate,” said Known. “Want me to shoot the bastard for you as well?”

  “Never mind. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Who are them mongs, anyway?” Hot Badge nodded back at Cricket cap, who had been joined by his colleague. They were both looking in the direction of the car.

  “Friends of the family,” Will said.

  “Well they’s going to go visit some poor bastard called Slowheaf next. Fort you might like to know.”

  “Slowheaf?”

  “Well, wiv a T-H at the end. Slowheaf.”

  “Slowheath. Right.”

  “Yeah. What I said. Some hard-sounding bastard came froo on the walkie-talkies while I was fuckin’ the lock. ‘We ’it Slowheaf next,’ he said.”

  Will shrugged. The name meant nothing to him.

  “Whatever.” Known lost interest with commendable swiftness. “What now?”

  Will pulled the hood of his jogging top over his head and eased out of the car. He watched the gang stuffing the fruits of his marriage to Cat into the back.

  “Something extremely foolish, probably,” he said.

  “Nice doing business,” Known said. Everyone left.

  The sky was bruising rapidly. The gun in his waistband felt impossibly huge now. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to use it. He watched the house and waited for change.

  A car pulled up a little over an hour later. It was dark by then, and the cold was drawing the colour from his hands. A full moon, and those streetlamps that had not been shattered, turned the grey pavement into a strange, luminous strip of pale orange. Will watched Cricket cap and his female counterpart walk up the street to meet it. Two men got out; they talked for a few moments; Cricket cap and the woman got into their own car. They all left.

  Will strode into West End Lane. He bypassed his home, forcing himself not to look, and wondered how such a course of events could have put him in a position where he was dicking around in the cold, his life in shreds, when he should have been helping his wife to relax while counting the fingers and toes of his little boy. The loss of the baby and Cat’s disappearance, maybe even her death, had reduced the meaning of his life here to nothing more substantial than the dust that skirled around West End Lane’s back alleys. He didn
’t know what to do. There was no point going back to the flat. They might have booby-trapped the place or one of the men might return while he was in there. Then what now? He felt frustrated and impotent, as in the common dream he sometimes had where he knew he must get to an appointment on time but the moment he went to open the door to leave, he remembered he had forgotten to brush his teeth or pick up his keys or turn off the electric blanket. Without realising, he was stumping up and down the pavement, his hands clenching into fists, repeating the name “Slowheath, Slowheath, Slowheath...”

  Who was this Slowheath? How did you begin to find a person you didn’t know anything about? That question, and the sight of a slow-moving police car nosing into the lane from the Finchley Road end, got him moving.

  Maybe there was one person he could rely on after all.

  SHE COULD SENSE them, beyond these walls. Somehow they were watching her.

  Her body wanted to change. It fluxed and fluttered beneath a skin that seemed too paltry to contain her. The woman and the boy forced themselves to the surface and she had to work hard to quell them. Only when she could exercise control over herself would it be possible to bring her otherness into play.

  She felt their eyes scorching her. They were waiting for her to acquiesce to what was inside her; to be comfortable with who she was. She sensed they were testing her. Well, she thought, pressing her hand against the thick wooden door, the test was over.

  The cameras were not, as Cheke had supposed, inside the cell, but poised just outside. A guard with a grenade launcher was positioned in full armour at the mouth of the corridor, ready to abort should she render.