To Die For

by Phillip Hunter

  ‘No. Please.’

  She drew her hand in.

  ‘Just take her,’ I said.

  Browne reached for her hand again. She snatched it away from him.

  ‘No,’ she shouted.

  She ran from the room. Browne stood upright and sighed. I heard the girl run up the stairs and slam the bedroom door.

  ‘Let her stay here for a while,’ Browne said.

  ‘It’s better she’s gone.’

  ‘What do you want me to do? Kidnap her?’

  ‘If you have to.’

  He was quiet for a moment.

  ‘She’s safer off out of it,’ I said.

  ‘She is that,’ he said. ‘She is that.’ He ran his hand over his head. After a moment, he said, ‘I’ll get you something to eat. Then I’ll need to change that dressing. Then, you rest. I’ll get those things done.’

  After I’d eaten and Browne had gone, I leaned back and wondered why the girl wanted to stay. And I wondered why I wanted her gone. I still needed her to tell me what happened.

  The house was quiet. I watched the room get slowly darker. I slept for a few hours. When I woke, it was fully dark. I went out to the kitchen for something to drink. Browne was there, sitting at the table, listening to the radio. He had a near-full bottle of Scotch in front of him. He saw me looking at it.

  ‘Courtesy of you,’ he said, lifting a glass in salute. He was drunk again.

  ‘Did you get a car?’

  ‘It’s outside. An old Jaguar. How do you feel?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I am, frankly, amazed at what punishment you can take,’ he said. He didn’t sound amazed. He sounded irritated that I was still alive. ‘You know, I once thought you’d been pounded too much in the ring. There was a night, remember, when you fought that Gypsy monster. What was his name? Lawrence?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Lawrence. Christ. The bloke wouldn’t go down and he had a right cross like a tank shell. I’d won, but I’d taken punishment.

  ‘I thought, that night, you were finished,’ Browne was saying. ‘And I mean finished. You were blabbering. Incoherent. You didn’t know where you were. I thought, “That’s it. His brain is mush.” But I was wrong. You could take anything in the ring. Anything.’

  I waited. I didn’t think he was finished talking. He put the glass to his lips and poured some Scotch down his throat. Then he put the glass on the table and filled it again.

  ‘You’ve been battered by life, Joe. That’s your problem. You’ve been beaten, clubbed by it so long you’ve become insensible to it. You’re in the twelfth, wandering around on soft legs, not knowing where you are.’

  ‘All done?’ I said.

  ‘No. I’m not all bloody done.’

  He brushed his hand lazily over his hair from front to back, assuring himself that it was still there.

  ‘Kid,’ he said, with his hand on his neck. ‘There’s something wrong with her. Not everyone is like you, you know. Not everyone is insensible. Some people get hurt by this bloody awful world.’

  If he was trying to make a point, he was taking a long time doing it. He sat and stared into space for a few seconds. I waited. It was better to let him get it out of his system.

  ‘It’s not physical,’ he said. ‘I wish it were. But it’s not. She’s scared and she’s been hurt. More than you ever were. She shakes, you know. She wets her bed. She’s going to need help.’

  He was right. The girl was fucked up.

  Browne seemed to remember that his hand was still resting on the back of his neck. He pulled it away and used it to lift the glass of Scotch. Hands were useful for that sort of thing. He drank deeply. He got slushy like this when he got drunk. He usually got self-pitying too. I waited for him to list his failures, his regrets.

  ‘I think she should stay here for now,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  He put the glass down wearily, as if his arm, the glass, everything had become too heavy to bear.

  ‘For some reason, she wants to be with you. Don’t ask me to explain it. It’s ironic, really. At least, I think it’s ironic. In some way. I don’t really know any more.’

  20

  The girl didn’t come near me for a couple of days. She’d be there, sure, looking in through the crack of the door or standing on the landing, her face hardly above the banister, her hands tight on the rail, staring down, watching Browne and me from a safe place, ready to bolt into her bedroom if either one of us tried to go near.

  We left her alone. I was itching to speak to her, press her for answers, but I was getting to understand how she’d react. Browne was keeping an eye on me, too, just to make sure I didn’t frighten her.

  We only really saw her when she came down for meals. Browne’s cooking was hopeless, but he tried to do his best.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s not very good,’ he said to her one lunchtime.

  He’d given her macaroni cheese on toast. It was more macaroni than cheese, more toast than macaroni. The girl scraped the stuff off the toast and spooned some of it into her mouth. She chewed it for a while and swallowed and put her spoon down. Browne looked at her helplessly.

  ‘Is there anything you’d prefer?’ he said. ‘What do you like to eat? What did you eat at home?’

  ‘I like Egusi soup,’ she said.

  ‘Egusi soup?’ Browne said. ‘Egusi soup.’

  So that was that. Browne went off to the library and got a book on African cooking. He spent half a day searching out the ingredients, trotting off to somewhere in west London, Notting Hill or Shepherd’s Bush or somewhere. He made the soup in the evening and dished it up to us. It was okay. The girl enjoyed it and Browne was happy with that.

  After we’d eaten, the girl washed the dishes while Browne dried. She sang quietly and Browne started to hum along with her. He’d had a few by then. He started to jig about. The girl stopped and turned and looked at him. I looked at him. His face was red and shining. He jigged a bit more and slowed down and stopped.

  ‘Highland dancing,’ he said. ‘I used to be quite good.’ He looked at the girl, then at me. His face got redder. ‘Well, for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘Haven’t you ever danced? Didn’t you take that lady friend of yours dancing?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But I probably should’ve done.’

  Browne spent the rest of the day jotting down recipes.

  I had the radio tuned to a London station and listened to the news every hour. There was something about a gunfight in East London, police calling it a fight between rival East European gangs. They obviously didn’t know enough, but it sounded like one side could’ve been Albanian.

  There wasn’t much on the news about the Dalston killings. The law was sticking to the idea that it was a drugs deal fuck-up. That was good. It helped that Walsh had his habit – they’d found a load of smack under the floorboards.

  They’d found Kendall and his wife, too, but they’d put that down to a robbery and they hadn’t connected it to the murders in Dalston. Money and jewellery had been nicked from Kendall’s house and I guessed that Paget or his men had taken them when they’d gone there. There was nothing at all about the two I’d left in my flat – Dirkin and that boy. I didn’t know why that was.

  The world turned on. I managed to keep breathing. But that didn’t stop Browne eyeing me up all the time, checking my pulse, sticking me with needles, that sort of thing. It kept him busy. One time he got the girl to help change my bandages.

  My arm got better. My head got worse. I didn’t tell Browne.

  We were sitting in the lounge, Browne and me, watching some programme on the box. It was supposed to be a comedy. It didn’t matter what it was, it was just something that stopped us having to talk to each other. I was still too fucked up to do anything except sit there and try not to hurt too much. Browne’s head bobbed and his eyes closed and opened.

  We heard a noise and turned and saw the girl creep in. I glanced at Browne. He glanced at me. It was the first time she’d come
into that room when both of us had been there. Browne made an effort and sat up straight.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said.

  She watched him for a while, like she didn’t know what to make of him. Then she turned to me and it was like everything that had happened to her had gone from her mind. There was a blank look on her face, empty, like she was sleepwalking. Yes, she’d been hurt.

  ‘Talk to her,’ Browne said to me.

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I tried. I said, ‘I knew someone once who had hair like yours. Braided like that. She wanted to be a beautician.’

  I waited for her to turn around and walk out or run out and upstairs. But she didn’t. She just carried on looking into me, looking for something. I don’t know what. I never knew.

  After a while, the laughter on the TV got her attention and she turned towards it. She looked at the idiots on the box as they fell about and argued with each other. And then she smiled, and for a moment she was like a child again, with eyes that glowed, lit by something that had managed, for a while, to fill the nothingness that usually spread throughout her.

  I had to remind myself that she was a child, not just like a child. She should’ve been playing games with friends, or learning something in school. Instead, she was on the run from whatever shit she’d had to live through. She wasn’t a child, though, except in age. To have a name like Kid, that was the joke.

  She came forward and climbed on to the sofa, next to Browne. He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He pointed his face in the direction of the TV. Whenever the girl laughed, Browne laughed. I don’t think he had any idea what the programme was about. When the girl was quiet, me and Browne were still, as if a movement of the air would destroy her.

  So we all sat there. We were a happy family – Browne slumped, trying to focus his eyes on a swimming television, me trying not to bleed too much, the girl forgetting her horrors.

  When the doorbell rang, we turned our heads as one.

  ‘I’m not expecting anyone,’ Browne said.

  We sat there and waited for them to go. Instead, the doorbell rang again and we heard the flap of the letter box open and snap shut.

  ‘The lights are on. They’ll know I’m home.’

  ‘Leave it,’ I said.

  The doorbell rang again. Browne drummed his fingers on his leg.

  ‘I’d better go see,’ he said. ‘Might be a patient.’

  ‘You don’t have patients.’

  ‘I’ve got a few elderly ones, from the old folks’ home. I help them out a bit with small things. I need the money, Joe.’

  He pulled himself up and padded out to the front door. I heard a woman’s voice drift in. The girl was listening carefully.

  ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ the voice said. ‘I wasn’t sure you were home.’

  She had one of those posh accents that made her sound like she was ordering her servants about.

  ‘I was out back... doing something.’

  ‘It’s been such a long time since we saw you last. Weren’t you supposed to pop in yesterday?’

  ‘Was I? Oh, I was busy. Tomorrow would be – ’

  ‘Anyway, I thought I’d come by, see if you were all right.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. I’m a bit busy at the moment.’

  ‘Can’t have our doctor getting ill on us.’

  The voice got nearer. The front door closed.

  ‘What I wanted to say was that Mrs Clarke’s hip is giving her some problems. She won’t have it seen to, for some reason. I don’t think she likes the idea of an operation. I thought you might have a word with her. I – oh – ’

  She came into the room then, followed by Browne. He wiped his hand over his head. She saw me and her eyebrows went up. She looked at the girl and her eyebrows went up some more.

  ‘I didn’t realize you had company,’ she said, turning to Browne. ‘Am I interrupting?’

  ‘Well...’

  She walked further into the room, smiling thinly at me, and sat herself on the edge of a chair. She wasn’t old, probably in her fifties, but she looked old. Her hair was straggly and grey, and her lips were thin, as if she’d spent too much of her time quietly pissed off with the world.

  ‘It’s so rare I venture this far,’ she said to me.

  Her knees were together when she said this, and she leaned forward a bit like she was getting ready to spring up and run out. She held her handbag closer to her. Then she looked at the girl and smiled. The girl watched her blankly.

  ‘Hello. And what’s your name?’

  ‘Her name’s Ebele,’ Browne said.

  ‘Ebele? Is that African?’ The girl nodded. ‘And how do you know Doctor Browne?’

  ‘I’m looking after her,’ Browne said. ‘For a neighbour.’

  ‘And this gentleman?’ she said, looking at me, smiling nervously. ‘Are you looking after him too?’

  Browne did his best to laugh. His eyes flicked over my shoulder, trying, I guessed, to see if the bandages could be seen beneath the jumper I was wearing.

  ‘Oh, I’ve known Joe a long time,’ he said, relaxing a bit. ‘He popped in to visit.’

  ‘And where do you know Doctor Browne from?’

  This she said to me. I shifted in my seat.

  ‘An old patient,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope,’ the woman said, laughing for some reason.

  ‘This is Sue,’ Browne told me. ‘Sue runs the old people’s home – ’

  ‘Nursing home, doctor.’

  ‘Yes. Nursing home.’

  ‘Unusual,’ she said. ‘For a patient to visit his old doctor, I mean.’

  ‘Is it?’ I said.

  ‘One occasionally becomes friends with one’s patients,’ Browne said, eyeing me. ‘All sorts of people.’

  ‘The empathy, I suppose.’

  ‘Empathy. Exactly.’

  The chit-chat died out. We all waited for the woman to get the hint. Instead, she looked around at the TV, the carpet, the ceiling. Most of all, she looked at the girl. Her eyes kept going back to her, making the girl edgy. Browne saw it too. The girl’s shoulders were hunched, her hands tightening into little fists.

  ‘Where in Africa are you from?’ the woman said.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ Browne said to the woman.

  ‘I do not know,’ the girl said.

  ‘Don’t know?’

  ‘I don’t think she understands you,’ Browne said. ‘English isn’t – ’

  ‘She seems frightened,’ the woman said, looking over at me.

  ‘I do not want to go back,’ the girl said.

  ‘Back?’

  Browne moved his feet about and wiped his head.

  ‘Tea?’ he said.

  ‘She said she doesn’t want to go back,’ the woman said. ‘Back where?’

  ‘To Africa,’ Browne said. ‘It wasn’t nice for her, was it, darling?’

  The girl moved her head from side to side. The woman’s eyes went from Browne to me then back to the girl.

  ‘Why don’t you want to go back?’

  ‘She thinks you’ve come to take her away,’ Browne said.

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘Immigration,’ Browne said.

  ‘Oh. I see. Don’t worry, dear, I won’t – ’

  She reached a hand out to the girl. The girl flinched and backed away.

  ‘Sue, I hope you don’t mind, but I really – ’

  ‘I am sorry I shot him,’ the girl said suddenly.

  ‘Shot him?’

  The girl pointed to me and the woman peered at me like I was dying there and then.

  ‘I want to stay here,’ the girl said.

  ‘Vivid imagination,’ Browne said, ‘children.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Please,’ the girl said.

  Browne was sweating. He said, ‘It’s just her way, Sue. She’s a little flighty.’

  ‘She said she shot him.’

  ‘Su
e,’ Browne said sharply, ‘if I might have a word with you?’

  The woman stood slowly. Browne led her out of the room. There was some muttering, mostly from Browne. At one point, the woman said, ‘I understand completely, doctor.’

  I looked at the girl and she looked at me. Then we heard the front door open.

  ‘Whenever you can,’ the woman said. ‘It would be much appreciated.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  The door closed.

  Browne came back into the room.

  ‘Bloody woman,’ he said.

  He collapsed into his chair. The girl scratched her nose and went back to watching the TV.

  ‘Is she a problem?’ I said to Browne.

  ‘Problem? She’s a bloody nightmare. Nosy old cow. Nobody’s safe. I pity those old folks. None of them have any privacy, you know. She knows more of their medical history than I do. Damn it. She’ll hound me for months over this.’

  ‘Will she call the police?’

  Browne shook his head.

  ‘I told her that Kid had come from a war zone, was still traumatized by it all. Not far off the truth, really.’

  ‘And me?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Did you know I was a prison doctor once?’ he said.

  ‘Right. An old patient.’

  The girl laughed at something on the box. She was sitting back in the chair, kicking her feet.

  ‘You were a big bloody help, by the way,’ Browne said to me. He wiped his head. ‘Bloody woman.’

  We went back to watching the TV. After a while I heard snoring. Browne was asleep. The girl was asleep next to him, her head on his lap. I watched them for a while. Then I closed my eyes. She hadn’t run off to her room this time, and she wasn’t having nightmares.

  So we carried on like that for a while. I was healing, Browne was staying sober, and we watched the girl get closer to us, like an animal inching its way forward, afraid but starving, edging slowly towards the hand of some stranger, ready to bolt if it was startled.

  She started talking, too, but not about that night in Dalston, not about anything that was important. I let it go. Browne had warned me not to push it and I didn’t think his loyalty towards a wanted criminal would stretch too far.