by Matthew Crow
‘He’s not really that chatty.’
‘I’m endearing.’
‘You’re insane,’ he said. ‘Literally you’re mad. Not the way everyone thinks, either. You’re fully blown out of this world mad.’
‘It’s my shtick,’ I said, then paused. ‘Does he know you’re back on the grid?’ I asked and Ross nodded.
‘We’re text friends again,’ he said, taking a cheap pay-as-you-go mobile out of his pocket.
‘U OK hun and all that?’ I asked.
‘L-O-L,’ Ross said, somewhat contradicted by the dour look on his face.
‘Can you get him here alone?’ I asked.
Ross nodded. ‘Now?’
‘No time like the present,’ I said as he began to text.
‘You do realise once I send this there’s no going back.’
I looked up at sad scaffolding of the Mariners.
‘What room did he take Sarah to?’ I asked.
‘Top floor. There’s no real rooms there. All the walls were smashed in. It’s open wide like a football field or something.’
‘I want you to get him up there. I’ll wait.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then you leave.’
‘Leave you on your own with him?’ said Ross. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘We’ve established that. It’s OK, Ross.’
‘It’s not. He’ll come for me,’ he said. ‘He’ll come for me and he won’t stop until he finds me.’
‘He won’t get the chance,’ I said. ‘Send the message. Let’s get this show on the road.’
Ross showed me the professional way into the building. The front was boarded with corrugated iron from the development that never was. It carried torn posters of local club nights and the odd ripped poster inquiring about Sarah’s whereabouts. But behind the building, where the scaffolding jutted out like the ribcage of some rotting carcass, there was a cellar door which opened to an expert touch.
‘I’ll wait here for him,’ he said as I slid my way inside, pulling a padlock from my pocket with the key sticking out and handing it to him. Ross had shown me the way in, but he had also shown me the way out.
Other than the front entrance and the cellar door there was only one way to escape the Mariners, should the situation ever call for it: the double fire doors on the top floor, which opened out onto the old metal staircase that spewed down towards the ground. Ross said that at one point it had been secured with a chain and padlock, but they’d both long since been cut through. Ross’s only other task that night was to ensure the door was secured.
Dan was to have only two possible points of exits. My plan, however tentative, could not cope with the variable of a third.
‘Oh,’ I said, just as he was about to seal me inside. ‘Can I have a cigarette?’
‘I thought you hated smoking?’ he said, looking uncertain.
‘Yeah well life is short,’ I said. ‘May as well make it that little bit shorter.’
‘Fine,’ he said, taking a crooked roll-up from a crinkled box. ‘Here.’
‘Light?’ I said as he rolled his eyes and handed me a packet of matches.
‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the whole box before he had a chance to object and closing the door behind me. I heard him grumbling as his footsteps clicked sharply up the stone steps and disappeared into the distance.
I stayed pressed against the door until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Shapes came and went like ghosts until the image of the building settled into itself and I was able to recognise it was a space I could navigate, as opposed to the jumble of dark edges and overhangs that it had been at first.
I made my way through the basement. It was made up of a series of filthy, interlocking, boxy rooms of crumbling walls and carpets of tin and glass.
The stairs to the ground floor were solid, which surprised me. The whole building felt vulnerable, like a daydream that would vanish if you blinked hard enough; as though one overly confident step in the wrong direction could bring it crashing down around your head. To touch something solid, to feel rooted and steady within the disintegrating walls, was an unexpected sensation.
The sound of my footsteps hit the upper levels like light shone on a den of bats. With each tap of my heel on stone I sent creatures scurrying outside.
By the time I reached the ground floor I was alone in the building.
When we were growing up, Donna and had vowed that we’d one day live in the Mariners. The moment it was closed and shut down our future seemed certain. We’d buy it together after acquiring a paper round each, transform it into a palace filled with pizzas and crisps and animals and then use it as a base when we were home from our roles as World Explorer and Professional Cat Burglar (me) and Rich Ex-Wife of A Professional Wrestler (Donna).
Looking around I wasn’t quite so certain I’d fully thought this plan through. The building was rotten from the inside in a way that a lick of paint and some strategically placed scatter cushions could never alter. Walls were so broken they wouldn’t be strong enough for the supports that mending them would require. The floorboards were patterned with ash and muck and were so frail they barely held themselves upright, let alone the weight of an inhabitant. I felt a twinge of nostalgia for the fading moments of the Mariners’ prime that I’d witnessed as a little girl. And, odder still, a brief hit of empathy. The same way I’d had to break completely before I’d had a chance to reform, so the Mariners was beyond the point of return; its only hope was to be torn to the ground and rebuilt from rock bottom.
My ascent to the top floor was brief, but destructive. Everything crumbled to the touch. My hand on the banister caused a snapping of wood that sent a row of slats hanging over the edge of the winding staircase, like the overbite of some cartoon whale. More than once I felt the floor begin to crack beneath my feet and was forced to tiptoe quickly forwards, lest my high school wish came painfully true and the ground did in fact open up and swallow me whole.
The top floor was as sparse as Ross had described it, and it felt less stable than even the rest of the building would have suggested.
The entire length of the building had been opened up to the roof, with windows on either side like a train carriage. The only thing breaking the flat stretch of darkness were the beams that burst from the floors in V shapes and poked through the patchwork roof that opened in places to allow for shards of moonlight.
I sat alone in the dark, flicking matches, sending ignored smoke signals that swirled on the rafters before being swallowed by the night. I was cupping my hand above a flickering flame – daring myself to press an inch closer, trying to ignore the burn and the growing scent of my own flesh when I heard voices downstairs.
Ross’s ever eager footsteps shadowed the steadier stomp-stomp-stomp of Dan as their voices made their way through the Mariners. Their voices were shrouded and mumbled but became clearer the higher they climbed, like they were emerging to the surface of a muddy river.
‘I heard someone up here,’ Ross was saying in pinched tones as he scurried after Dan up the second staircase.
I flicked the flame of the match and wafted the smoke as best I could before ducking behind a thicker beam. With my hand cupping the screen to catch any stray light I opened my messages and texted Donna.
Can u text Adam and send him to the Mariners? I think something might be up, I typed, before hitting send and slipping the phone into the back pocket of my jeans.
‘I can’t hear anyone,’ said Dan.
‘Smells like burning,’ Ross said bleakly, as they reached the top floor.
‘It certainly stinks,’ Dan said. ‘This isn’t a game is it, Ross?’ he asked.
Ross took a few seconds to respond. ‘I think I heard something downstairs,’ he said nervously. ‘I’ll go and have a look. You check in there.’ He scurried away before Dan had a chance to insist otherwise.
I heard Ross stop at the mezzanine. The sound of chains clanking implied that the lock had been secured. The front door and the
back door were the only means of escape.
Dan made a long, steam-train exhale that seemed to chill the entire building and turned to leave.
‘Hello,’ I said, stepping out from the shadows. I hadn’t entirely believed our plan would work, let alone planned exactly what I would say to him if it did.
He wasn’t startled, but I could tell I’d given him a fright. He turned quickly to see who was there and then squinted the way you do at a person whose image isn’t immediately familiar.
‘Is this a joke?’ he said, walking towards me.
More footsteps from downstairs – quick and light – before the rear door was opened and closed with a sharp click.
‘I wanted to give you this,’ I said, balling the two notes Dan had paid me for the flyers that never got delivered and throwing them to the floor in front of him. Dan smiled and I found myself taking two steps backwards, brushing my hand across the wooden beam I’d been hiding behind to steady myself as I stepped towards the windows at the front of the building.
‘A deal’s a deal, Claudette,’ he said with a smile. ‘Sometimes there’s no going back.’
‘I get to choose,’ I said and he scoffed. ‘Not you.’
‘Pretty dangerous out here for a lady on her own,’ he said as he stepped closer still. I felt a wave of fear judder from my heart right down to my legs but forced myself still.
‘I’m no lady,’ I said.
‘That you aren’t.’
‘When did Sarah come to you for help?’ I asked and he shook his head.
‘I think you’ve got the wrong person,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’m not sure I recognise you at all. Have we ever me before?’ He laughed. ‘You look confused. Do you get confused sometimes?’ he asked, gently taking my arm in his. His hands were cold and hard. Snags of chewed fingernail scratched at my skin as he inspected my arms.
‘Sometimes,’ I said, growing cold at his touch.
‘Ever think about covering these up?’ he asked, stroking his fingers across my scars.
‘No.’
‘They’re hideous. Don’t they remind you of the time you nearly died?’
‘They remind me that I lived,’ I said quietly, snatching my arm away.
‘You’re a brave little soldier aren’t you, Claudette Flint. You think you’ve got through the worst life has to throw at you, well guess what? You haven’t. You haven’t survived. You just haven’t died yet,’ he whispered sharply, his breath a pungent mix of cheap spirits and old tobacco. ‘Don’t mistake coincidence for achievement.’
‘You’re a poet,’ I whispered, leaning in to meet his face as he jabbed his fist into my stomach, causing me to double over, hitting the floor with my knees so that I was forced to stare up at him as he towered over me.
‘You stupid little bitch,’ he said. ‘What did you think was going to happen here? What difference did you think you could make?’
My insides were screaming and I knew speech would be hard won, but I forced myself to laugh as he walked away.
‘You think you’re that special?’ I asked. ‘You think you’re that important? You’re a sad little man worth nothing. Less than nothing. You only attract kids, whose lives are so bad even your company seems like a positive alternative. You’re tiny. And you’re weak. And I hate you.’
Dan turned slowly and watched me as I stood up.
‘Really?’ he asked, lifting the fabric of his jumper to reveal a knife handle sticking from the elastic of his tracksuit bottoms. ‘You might want to rethink your attitude.’
‘Sarah didn’t rethink hers though, did she?’ I asked.
‘And look where that got her.’
‘Thousands of pounds of your money that you still haven’t got back,’ I said as he lurched towards me and grabbed me around the waist, pressing me towards his body.
‘Dead,’ he whispered, so loudly that he may as well have yelled it. ‘She had big ideas too. And look how that turned out.’
I somehow released myself from Dan and walked back over to the window.
‘I’ve fought worse than you,’ I said as he began to circle me, keeping his distance.
‘Oh really.’
‘You’re nothing.’
‘I was something the night Sarah died.’
‘You killed her.’
‘Is that what you want to hear?’ he said. ‘Some big confession?’ I nodded. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I didn’t kill Sarah.’
‘You took every chance she had of a life away from her.’
‘Now who’s the poet? But the stupid bitch swam out into those waves herself. Shame, really. If I had caught her that night I would have done it.’
‘Done what?’
‘Killed her.’
‘I knew it,’ I said.
‘So what now?’ he asked, raising his arms either side of him up to the ceiling expectantly, as he spun around. ‘You recording my confession? You going to have me arrested for a crime I would have committed given half the chance? Or are you going to go and tell everyone how brave and strong you are and how bad and weak I am?’ he asked as we slowly moved in circles. ‘Or, are you going to kill me?’
‘No,’ I said, stopping beside a window. ‘But I will fight you.’ I felt my phone vibrate three times in my back pocket.
‘Might I remind you, little girl…’ he said, taking the knife from its resting place and pointing it towards me, dabbing the air either side of my head like he was knighting me from afar.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘You’d kill me before I got a punch in. I want to test your strength.’ I took the matches from my pocket. ‘Your real strength. Have you ever played Chicken?’ I took a match and lit it, flicking it in his direction, the same way he had gotten the barman’s attention that first day in the club.
‘You want to take this outside?’
‘No,’ I said, as the tip of another match exploded on the sandpaper before I flicked it his way. ‘I want to stay here. Right here.’ I lit three matches together, lowering their heads until the entire sticks were on fire.
The tips of my fingers began to singe and I moved the matches as quickly as I could without extinguishing the flames, before placing them on a dry patch of the wood surrounding one of the huge windows of the Mariners.
The bone-dry old wood began to singe and smoulder quicker than I imagined, and before long there was a beautiful lick of fire teasing tentatively up the window.
‘You’re as crazy as everyone says, aren’t you?’ he asked shaking his head as he laughed.
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But I bet I can sit this out longer than you. I bet I can sit here longer than you can. I bet I can watch you run, terrified, before it gets too much.’
‘I think you’ve bitten off more than you can chew,’ he said as I moved forward slowly. The flames began to multiply steadily and smoothly, the heat silently pulsing at my back until it became unbearable. ‘I think you’ve underestimated me.’
‘And I don’t think that’s possible,’ I said, kneeling down so that I was sat on the floor with my knees bent beneath me.
‘I’m a man of pride,’ he said, slowly lowering himself to the floor but remaining poised on two bent knees like a praying mantis.
‘You’re a piece of shit,’ I spat.
‘I will cut your tongue clean out of your head if you ever speak to me like that again,’ he whispered.
‘I will fight you,’ I said
‘You will lose,’ he said. ‘My army is bigger than yours.’
‘Ah,’ I said. The flames grew so bright that night had become day inside the cranium of the building. ‘Honour amongst thieves and junkies. And bastards.’
‘Them’s my people,’ he smirked.
Outside there was the sound of running towards the building. Inside, the smell of the fire moved from bonfire night to something more sinister. The back wall began to pulse and glow, the flames spreading outwards and upwards.
‘How many of them do you think would take a bullet for you? How many would lie for you?
’
‘Once I pull strings they tend to stay pulled,’ he said, glancing up at the flames that were licking towards the ceiling. Even he couldn’t hide his concern.
‘But what if they had the chance to get out? What if one word and they could be away from you and everything you do.’
‘They know where their bread’s buttered.’
‘Only because you make it that way,’ I said. ‘You squeeze people out. You stamp on them, stamp them down and down until they feel like they’ve got nothing to offer the rest of the world.’
‘It’s not personal,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It’s just business.’
‘Not one person you know is friends with you because they care. Not one person you pay wants to accept your money. You got where you are by taking people at their lowest and greasing the pole so they could never get back up.’
‘That’s how the world works,’ he said as flames crept along a beam at the far edge of the wall. ‘There’s the weak and there’s the strong.’
‘Then there’s the bad,’ I said as the sound of someone yelling outside grew over the flames. I coughed into my hand as the smell began to tickle the back of my throat and Dan raised his eyebrows in a smug, expectant arch. I wiped the beading sweat from my top lip on the back of my hand and continued. ‘But you’re only strong while it’s all underground. While it’s all hush-hush. Once you’ve been smoked out… once it’s out in the open, they’ll turn on you like cannibals. Not one of them will save you.’
Dan looked uneasy and made it to his feet.
The air in the room felt like a vice that was crushing in around my throat. ‘They’ll be coming now,’ I said. ‘Coming to see the commotion, to see who’s here. It’s been a long time since you let yourself be seen in HQ, eh?’ My voice was raised over the roar of the flames.
‘I’m the mastermind.’
‘You’re an idiot,’ I said. ‘Don’t you see? They’ve wanted to nail you for so long, Dan, but you were so far removed. Now they have you where they want you. They’re coming, like you came for Sarah. The difference is they’ll catch you, right in the middle of it all. How much money do you have stashed in here? How many grams are hidden in these walls? Your entire life is on fire and you’re too stupid to realise that you can’t outrun it. You lost. Sarah won. It’s finished.’