To Die For

by Phillip Hunter

  For a moment, I didn’t move, didn’t speak. ‘Don’t hurt her’, he’d said. Not, ‘don’t hurt me’ or ‘us’. I put the gun away, grabbed Warren by the shoulder, spun him round and pushed him towards the stairs.

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed, tugging out hair curlers. When she saw her husband walk through the door, she began to say something. She stopped when she saw me. Her face fell, all emotion wiped from it. She stood and lunged forward.

  ‘Sarah.’

  Warren reached out, tried to hold her, but she scrambled past him, batting him out of the way and was into me before I knew it. It was an attack like I’d never known. It was desperate and hungry and total. She scraped her nails across my face, both sides, again and again, trying to gouge my eyes out. I lifted my right up and blocked that side, but my left arm was still useless and she was drawing blood. She panted and made a weird moaning sound, and her face was vicious and terrifying. It wasn’t human, it was animal. Warren stood in the centre of the room, still and useless, staring at his wife. He could’ve run. He could’ve done lots of things, but he just stood and stared. The rush of fury was staggering. With my right hand, I grabbed the woman by her blouse and pulled her forward. She lurched towards me and I shook her hard. She lost her balance enough to stop the frenzy for a moment. I couldn’t do much with my left, but I could do enough with my right to make up for it. I should’ve whacked her, knocked her out. I didn’t need a mad woman to deal with. I put my hand around her throat, just beneath her jaw, and squeezed. She went pale, looking into my eyes. She tried to knock my arm away. Warren backed away from us, finding a corner to hide in. I knew I shouldn’t fuck about. I knew I shouldn’t leave loose ends. I knew I should smack her down and have done with it. I held her tightly. She was fighting for her life now, a strange rasping sound coming from her mouth, her hands clawing at my arm. She was a pregnant woman. If I squeezed too hard, she’d lose consciousness. Fine. Just a small adjustment and I’d hit the pressure points and she’d be out. She might miscarry or something. So what? What was that to me? I’d killed already and was tied into that, if the police ever got me.

  All I have to do is squeeze, I told myself. Squeeze. Wasn’t that what Paget had said, his gun to my head? ‘I’m good at squeezing.’ Squeeze and she’s out of it and I can get to the bottom of all this shit.

  She clawed at me and her eyes bulged and watered, and her mouth made movements. She was trying to talk to me, tell me something.

  Do it, my mind said.

  I can’t, it echoed back.

  I let go. She staggered back on weak legs, coughing, gasping for air.

  ‘Don’t do that again,’ I said.

  She collapsed on to the edge of the bed. She sat for a moment and looked at the carpet. Her chest heaved and her face was streaked with tears, but she was oddly calm. She lifted a hand slowly to her hair, touched a curler and took it out. She reached down and picked up a brush. I stared at her. Warren stared at her. She took another curler out of her hair and slowly brushed it down.

  I turned to Warren.

  ‘I won’t hurt you. I just want some answers. Then I’ll go. Understand?’

  Warren stared at his wife, stared at me.

  ‘Please...’

  ‘I’m not going to fucking hurt you,’ I said. I was shaking. ‘Okay?’

  Sweat trickled down my forehead. Blood trickled down my cheeks. Warren was looking at me like I was unrecognizable, like I wasn’t human.

  ‘It was a set-up,’ I managed to say. ‘The robbery. Cole ordered it.’

  He wasn’t listening. He was watching his wife. She brushed her hair and gazed into a space between here and nowhere.

  ‘It’s the baby,’ Warren said. He wasn’t talking to me. He wasn’t talking to anyone.

  ‘Cole ordered the job,’ I said. ‘You understand?’

  ‘Cole?’

  ‘Your boss.’

  ‘Ordered it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t...’

  ‘I was hired by a man called Beckett. He was hired by Cole.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  She carried on brushing her hair. He kept looking at her, watching a car wreck he was passing.

  ‘It was an inside job,’ I said. ‘You were a decoy. Cole used you to make it look like a legit robbery.’

  My words didn’t mean anything to him. He didn’t care. I took him by the arm and led him from the bedroom. On the landing, I squared him so that he faced me, and backed him up against the wall.

  ‘Listen to me. I need answers. Give them to me and I’ll go. I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt your wife.’

  ‘You won’t hurt us.’

  ‘No.’

  I could see his eyes clear. I eased him towards the stairs and followed him down. I said, ‘Do you know a man called Thurber? John Thurber.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Think.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘Tell me about Pat Garner.’

  ‘Pat? What about him? What’s he got to do with it all?’

  ‘He’s the manager, isn’t he? Was he working the night of the casino job?’

  We had reached the downstairs hall. I moved him into the lounge and sat him on the sofa. I pulled a chair up and sat opposite.

  ‘I...’

  ‘Was Garner there that night? Think.’

  ‘No. He was off.’

  ‘Why?’

  Warren shook his head.

  ‘My wife,’ he said.

  ‘Listen to me. Your wife’s fine. I won’t touch her again. I won’t touch either of you. You won’t ever see me again once you give me some answers. Someone inside your casino gave the robbers information. Now, why wasn’t Garner there?’

  ‘Just a normal night off. That’s all. He wouldn’t have had anything to do with the robbery.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He used to make sure nothing untoward happened in the casino. He was honest. He cleaned it up. He wouldn’t have been involved in anything illegal.’

  ‘What do you mean, cleaned it up?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m not saying Mr Cole had anything to do with it. You understand?’

  ‘Fine. Cole’s a saint. Tell me about what went on before Garner cleaned it up.’

  ‘Some of the tables were rigged.’

  ‘Who ran it back then? Before Garner.’

  ‘Man called Wilkins.’

  ‘Wilkins? He was the manager?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  That didn’t make sense. What was Wilkins doing running a casino?

  ‘When?’

  ‘When was he manager? Uh, four years ago. Five, I think.’

  ‘And now he’s Cole’s second in command, right?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know exactly.’

  ‘Was Wilkins there that night?’

  Warren thought for a moment.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He was. He came in sometimes to hang out. He was there that night.’

  ‘Could he get to the money the security van was supposed to pick up?’

  ‘Yes. He could.’

  Was that the reason Wilkins had decided to manage the casino, to set up Cole? That couldn’t be it. Wilkins had been manager way back.

  ‘Did Wilkins ever skim?’

  ‘Oh, no. I’m pretty sure about that. I would’ve known. We knew we were taking too much from the customers, with the rigging, and we were told to keep quiet. Well, I’m not going to make waves, you know, so I turned a blind eye. We all did. When Garner took over, it was a relief. I’m not a dishonest man. Mr Garner knew that if we were caught, we’d lose our licence, and he didn’t think it was worth it.’

  ‘So, Wilkins screwed the punters, but not Cole?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I thought about that for a moment. A bent casino. That was nothing new. The Sportsman had been bent, and I knew Vic Dunham used his place to clean money, an
d to take in drugs cash. The smart bastard even paid tax on it.

  I had to know why Wilkins would be a casino manager. He had to have had an angle.

  ‘What else did they do there?’

  ‘When Wilkins was boss?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Drugs? Laundering?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. Look, I didn’t know about any of that, all right? They just ripped off the customers. Bent tables, plants in poker games, deals with some of the women, watered-down champagne. That sort of thing. Nothing very serious, and they never went too far. The public never got suspicious. We used electromagnets on the tables, small things like that. No one at the tables ever knew. We fixed the dealing shoes – cutting back on picture cards – and some of the slots...’

  Warren rambled on for a while, but I wasn’t listening any more. My mind was trying to make connections, stuttering from one thing to another, and there was a mix of thoughts.

  Something was connecting, though. Something way back.

  Warren had stopped talking and was looking at me, and his face was white. He edged back in his seat. He said, ‘Jesus.’

  24

  It was dark at four in the afternoon, and raining. It was summer, or supposed to be, and I probably thought ‘fucking country’ or something like that.

  There were a handful of customers in the cafe, all at tables, all by themselves. The strip lighting gave everything a washed-out greenish look. Everyone looked sick.

  There was the fat woman behind the till and the young waitress in front, leaning back against the counter, staring at her feet. When I walked in, the fat lady saw me and said, ‘Coming up.’

  I took a seat by the window. The young waitress ambled over with a pot of coffee, her shoulders sagging with the weight of the hour, her feet making sticking sounds on the lino. She half nodded to me and put a mug on to the tabletop and spilled warm coffee into it.

  Wind caught the rain a couple of times and lashed it against the plate-glass window. I remember that, the rain. Cars splashed through puddles and their tyres whirred and zipped with the water. People walked with their heads low and their shoulders hunched. Buses and cabs and cars had their lights on. Thunder rumbled, vibrating the window. It died down and the place was quiet again, nobody talking.

  The door crashed open and two women burst into the cafe, their heads covered with their jackets. The sounds of the street came in with them, full of water and engine sounds. When the door closed it was quiet again and the sounds were outside and far off.

  One of the women had short blond hair, shaved almost, and silverware in her nose. The other had straight black hair and thick black eyeliner. I recognized them. I knew what they did. They didn’t work the Sportsman, but they worked nearby, around King’s Cross. They shook their wet jackets and sat at a table near me.

  The fat woman disappeared out the back. A man in a suit turned the page of a broadsheet. Someone coughed. I remember all this.

  The women were talking about something, their voices low. I wasn’t interested, but they were near me and the way they huddled close to each other, leaned over the table, gave their words urgency.

  ‘Never catch ’em,’ I heard the black-haired one say. ‘They never do.’

  A man in denims stood and walked over to the till. The fat lady came back with a plate piled with food. The food was steaming. She handed the plate to the waitress and went over to the till. She took a pad from her apron pocket. The man in denims had long, straggly brown hair.

  ‘Fuck,’ the blonde said. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  The waitress dropped the plate on to the table in front of me. I was hungry. I cut the steak and watched some blood ooze out.

  They started talking again. I tuned out. I cut. I ate. Blood came out. I heard phrases, words. I heard ‘police’. I heard ‘psycho’. I heard ‘her body’.

  Something was wrong.

  I swallowed. I cut another piece of meat and put it in my mouth. The sky flashed and the windows shook from the crack of thunder.

  I heard ‘some alley’.

  I stopped eating.

  I heard ‘razor or something’.

  I heard ‘couldn’t recognize her’.

  I froze, not looking anywhere, not doing anything, just hanging there like one of those drops of water that’s about to fall from a leaking tap. It hangs there and hangs there and everything seems to stop. And then it stops some more.

  I heard ‘Brenda something’.

  The meat in my mouth felt different; felt like flesh, not meat; felt like death, not food. It felt bloody and pulpy and disgusting and I wanted to spit it out.

  Brenda something.

  My insides knotted up. Something cold sucked on my guts. The blood drained from my head.

  The waitress was standing next to me. I hadn’t seen her come.

  Brenda something.

  ‘You want some more?’

  Brenda something.

  ‘More coffee?’

  Brenda something.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Brenda something.

  ‘Is there something wrong with the steak?’

  I can’t remember what I did with the half-chewed meat in my mouth. I swallowed it, I suppose. I can’t remember much of anything after those words. I know I grabbed the one nearest me, the blonde. I know I shook her, shouted at her. I wanted her to tell me. I know I hurt her. I didn’t care about that. I know people screamed and yelled and tried to pull me off. I know I wound up wet in the street and then I wound up being sick in a pub somewhere off the Pentonville Road. I threw my guts up into a toilet and then I rolled into a ball and felt the stale cold piss and water soak my jacket and my trousers and I didn’t care.

  They threw me out of the pub and I tried to get back in for more booze. I banged on the door and the barman or someone opened up and started to say something. I grabbed him and hurled him into a parked car and walked back in and ripped a bottle of cheap Scotch from the wall behind the counter, pulling down half the other bottles as well. There were a few others in the pub but nobody stopped me and nobody said anything. I left the pub and walked past the barman, or whoever he was.

  I drank the Scotch until I no longer felt the acid burn as it went down. That was what I wanted, to no longer feel. I drank some more and then dropped the bottle to the floor and fell to my knees and held my head in my hands. I felt empty, weak.

  I went to the Sportsman. I found Matheson. I grabbed him.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know, Joe. Jesus Christ. Please.’

  I snatched another bottle of Scotch.

  I found another pro outside. I grabbed her.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘You’re hurting me. I don’t understand you. What do you want?’

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to say anything. I wanted to keep the moment held like that drip of water, stuck there. I almost cried, then I almost burst out laughing but I caught myself.

  ‘What ha – ’

  My voice cracked. I took a swallow of the booze and felt the fumes come right back up and into my nose. My head hurt and I realized stupidly that my jaw ached from where I’d been clenching it and grinding my teeth.

  ‘Was it her? Was it Brenda?’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please, don’t.’

  I went back to my flat and wrenched up the floorboard. I took out the rag-wrapped bundle and opened it up. I had a Beretta then. It looked good. It looked sleek. I wanted it in my hand. I picked it up and it felt heavy, solid, like it gave me a purpose or something. I thumbed the safety off and on and let the clip slide out on to my palm. I checked that the clip was fully loaded and rammed it home. I jacked a round into the chamber, let off the hammer and slid the magazine out again. I took a cigarette package from beneath the floorboards and opened it up and tipped another round into the palm of my hand. I pushed this into the magazine and rammed it home. I wanted the thing full. I gri
pped the Beretta tight in my hand and tried to think what I could destroy.

  I didn’t want to think about her. A john, they’d said. Some psycho had cut her up. Carved her up and dumped her in an alley.

  I tried not to think about it, about her, but the more I tried not to think about it, the more I thought about it. I drank straight from the bottle in gulps and it made me heave. My throat hurt from the throwing up I’d done earlier, but I wanted the pain. I thought the Scotch would help me not to think; I thought that it might blur things. It didn’t.

  I wanted to kill him. I didn’t know who he was. I asked around. Nobody knew. I still wanted to kill someone.

  I went to see Frank Marriot. His club was closed. I wasn’t armed. I wanted this to be with my hands. I wanted to feel it. They tried to stop me. They didn’t.

  I found Marriot in his office at the back. He had some Polaroids laid out on his desk. Nice pictures of scared children. He said something. I don’t know what it was. He seemed amused. He took his glasses off and wiped them on his tie and started to talk again. He put his glasses back on and pushed them up on to the bridge of his nose. I smashed my fist into the glasses. They shattered; his nose shattered. Everything shattered. I ground the glass into his eye. He’d stopped talking by then.

  It took four of them to pull me off. By then, the damage was done. I don’t remember much about it. I remember the blood. I was soaked in it. I remember the gore on my hands, the sound of bones cracking, his screams, the smell of his piss.

  I heard he was in hospital for weeks. I heard he lost his eye.

  It didn’t make me feel any better.

  I always wonder what it was she’d thought about when she’d been quiet and had that far-off look. Christ, I wish I’d asked her.

  25

  I left Warren’s and drove. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t care. I just drove. I didn’t know what time it was. It was late, that was all I knew. Too late.

  All around me now seemed grey and fogged and coated with soot and grime. The sky was grey. The cars, the road, the buildings were grey and shapeless, blurring into one. My life was grey. I was getting old. It began to turn dusk, or maybe it was the dawn. It didn’t matter. The image of the Argentinian kid, dumped on the ground like trash, flickered in my mind. I shook my head to get rid of it. Brenda’s face, bloody and screaming for me, came instead. I set my jaw and stared ahead.