by David Mark
He tries to move. Pain climbs up his arms and grips the back of his skull. He realizes his hands are tied behind him and he is sitting on the hard plastic seat of the toilet.
‘Morning, princess.’
Adam raises his head as his attackers congregate in the doorway. The room is only a few feet square, and there is not enough space for them all to stand inside, so the girl, and one of the baseball caps, loiter outside.
The driver has removed his hat to reveal flattened curly hair, and is kneeling down in front of Adam, holding a screwdriver, blade pointed inwards, like a dagger. Sergio Tacchini has stripped down to T-shirt and tracksuit trousers. He is holding a kitchen knife in one hand, and some sort of Oriental weapon, made from three wooden cylinders held together with links of metal chain, in the other.
Adam starts to come back to himself. He feels fear, there are aches and pains, but his overwhelming sensation is of confusion and … perhaps, victimization. He feels picked on. Overloaded. His mind clings to a sense of injustice, a bleating thought: You’ve been through enough. There’s enough on your plate. Like there wasn’t enough to deal with? Single spies and battalions, eh lad? Never rains but it pours. This isn’t fair!
‘Wake up, you twat,’ says the driver, and stands up, giving Adam a kick on the shin.
‘I’m awake, you prick,’ says Adam, teeth bared. ‘If you’re after money, you’ve really backed the wrong horse …’
Sergio says, ‘Shut yer mouth,’ and steps forward, but the driver holds him back.
‘Mine,’ he says, then fixes Adam with a look he has seen so many times on so many Saturday nights. It is the Hollywood hard man, the malevolent glare, the granite face practised in front of mirrors. It is the scowl of the pretender.
‘Why you bothering Jardine, eh?’ he asks. ‘You want to get in a legend’s face, do you? You want to harm the big man, eh? Think you’re something? Look at you. You’re fuck all. Fuck all.’
‘What are you talking about?’ he asks, screwing up his face and feeling pain erupt in his temples. ‘I’m here because I was invited. He doesn’t want me here, I’m gone.’
‘See the hard man now?’ asks the driver scornfully, looking at his friends for approval, and getting it. ‘Wetting his pants. Wants to go home. Should have thought of that before you came up here.’
‘You asked me here!’ shouts Adam, pissed off. ‘You asked me!’
‘I know what I hear, and I know important people don’t want you bothering Jardine.’
‘Fine! You could explain that verbally! Could have put it in a letter! You were on the phone to me last night! Why go to all this bother? I’m not that fucking interested.’
‘Yeah, yeah. You’re shitting yourself. You’re shaking all over.’
‘Am I?’
‘Just stay away from him. That’s what she wants, that’s what I provide?’
‘Who’s she?’
‘Never you mind.’
‘This is bloody stupid. Untie me and I’ll get back on the next train. You think I need this? Do you know anything about my life?’
‘I think you need a lesson first. I think Mr Jardine would approve of us giving you a lesson.’
‘What are you fuckin’ …’
The driver lunges at Adam. This is the bit he has been looking forward to. He hits him hard across the forehead with the handle of the screwdriver, while kneeing him in the chest. ‘Stay away from Francis Jardine,’ he shouts, as he lays into Adam, to the whoops of delight from outside the room, against an accompaniment of ‘Go on, son’ and ‘Kill the bastard!’.
Adam tries to make his body as small as he can and tucks his chin into his chest. The blows to the head hurt, but not intolerably, and the driver is wasting energy with his kicks, which cannot contain any real power in such a small room, and at such an angle. Angry, but professional, Adam kicks out and his right leg thumps into the shin of his attacker. He drags his boot down the leg, grating flesh from muscle and bone. The driver yells in an indignant voice unaccustomed to pain, and he hops back, yelping. Sergio darts forward, cleaver raised, and Adam kicks out again, wriggling his hands and wrists, feeling his bonds tear. He frees his left arm just in time to block the cleaver, and sees a frayed school tie hanging from his own wrist. He kicks again, hitting Sergio on the kneecap with a satisfying crack, pulling his other hand free and trying to stand.
There is noise on the stairs, as the other baseball cap tries to open the door and it bangs into the face of the driver, who is bent over, trouser leg rolled up, examining his leg, trying to stick the skin back down over a strip of oozing blood and shredded flesh. He staggers back, hurt, cursing, and bangs into Sergio. They fall, almost into the bathtub, teetering on the brink, and Adam takes a moment to try and untie his right hand, still held fast behind the toilet …
The girl, shrieking, asking what the fuck is happening, banging at the door, suddenly falls silent.
Adam hears a whimpering, a garbled apology, then nothing. The baseball cap, half in, half out of the door, turns to face something on the stairs, and his expression turns to fear, a genuine, primal terror. It is not the face of a naughty boy, an impertinent teen. It is the face of a man who can taste death on the air.
The room seems to grow colder, the cries of the two young men struggling on the verge of the bathtub are sucked into nothingness by a silent explosion, a burst of utter noiselessness, that cascades into the room as the door opens, slowly, inexorably …
An old man stands in the doorway. He is big around the middle and the muscles in his limbs run to fat, but there is a strength to him, a sense of concealed power. His face is monstrous. White skin, albino white, marbled with red: scaly burns across nose and cheeks, like uncooked meat stretched across a frame. His head is concealed beneath a flat cap, and Adam sees the slope of his skull as a duck egg steeped in onion skins.
There is no malice in his expression as he looks at Adam. He takes him in, emotionless, then turns to face the two struggling youngsters. In a stride he crosses the bathroom, his arm brushing Adam’s as he moves. Adam can smell damp earth, rotting vegetation, the mulch and algae of untended ponds, and he shivers and flinches from the touch.
The man grabs the driver by the throat and with one hand pins him against the wall behind the bath, his feet drumming on the bathtub; squirming, in both pain, and at the sensation of this thing’s skin on his own.
He leans in, and opens a toothless mouth.
‘Your mum is going to go fucking spare,’ he says, and drops him.
The man turns and nods at Adam. He looks at Sergio, sprawled on the floor, clutching his kneecap, and his milky eyeball fills, for a moment, with crimson blood. He blinks, and a red tear runs down his cheek, leaving a gory trail over the sores and scales. He extends a hand to Adam, before experience makes him withdraw it. He nods again.
‘I’m Irons,’ he says. ‘Come with me.’
EIGHTEEN
3.34 p.m.
Adam’s body language speaks in swear words as he sits hunched in the passenger seat of the red Toyota Hilux, twin-cab, scowling out of the window, his back turned on the creature in the driver’s seat. He’s scared and sore and wants to go home. He wants to rub his bruised jaw, but pride won’t allow him to show he’s suffering. He doesn’t know if he’s been saved from a beating, saved from a stabbing, or saved from jackals by a hungry bear.
Music drifts up from the radio, almost lost over the drone of the tyres on the wet road. It’s early Cliff Richard, a jaunty number called ‘Blue Turns to Grey’. The big man taps his gloved hands on the wheel, enjoying the rhythm.
‘Met him once,’ he says, nodding at the stereo. ‘One of the brothers had a warrant out on him. Handsome, wasn’t he – our Cliff. When they liked the look of somebody they’d put out what they called a “W”. It meant whoever got them together would get a nice few quid. I had the chance to deliver. Saw him down Catford, if you can believe it. Decided against it. Seemed all right, did Cliff. Wouldn’t have been right serving him u
p like that.’
Adam feels as though somebody has reached inside his skull and squeezed his brain for firmness. He wouldn’t be surprised to feel pulped cerebral cortex running down his cheeks.
‘You like Cliff Richard?’ he asks, quietly.
‘Lovely voice,’ says the driver, a little snippily.
The song changes. Adam wonders if his life could get any more surreal, then stops, lest Fate be listening and open to temptation.
‘He’s just over-eager,’ says Irons, suddenly. His East London accent is gravelly with cigarettes. ‘The boy, I mean. He wants to impress his mum. His granddad. He thought he was helping. He hero worships Mr Jardine. Wants to be just like him. Try not to be too upset.’
Adam can’t bite back the laugh. ‘Try not to be too upset? Would you be upset?’
The driver shrugs. ‘I’ve had worse and got over it. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing.’
He glares out of the window, trying to slow his pulse, watching as the council estate, with its boarded-up shops and spray-painted shutters, slowly bleeds into detached homes and oak-lined avenues, bistros and boutiques.
‘My name’s Irons,’ says the driver, quietly. ‘You can add a mister, if it feels less odd. But Irons will do. I don’t give out my name very often, so I hope you appreciate the gesture and what it means.’
Adam looks back at him. ‘You know who I am, I’m guessing.’
‘I know your name. I know you got arrested a few days back after losing your temper with some coppers. I know you did a bit of work with Larry Paris. I know you’re a long way from home. After that, I don’t know very much, but finding things out is one of my specialities. I don’t have many others.’
Adam pauses. Clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘I had nothing to do with Larry’s death, you know that, right?’
‘None of my business,’ says Irons, with a sniff. ‘If I thought it was you, and that you’d put his body somewhere it caused problems for me and mine, then we’d be having a very different conversation.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ mutters Adam.
Irons takes his hands off the wheel and lights an untipped cigarette from a gold packet. Adam runs his gaze over him, hoovering up details. He is wearing polyester-blend grey trousers, black shirt, thin black tie, and a heavy, zip-up, leather jacket. He is somewhere between sixty and seventy, but with his sores and diseased features, he looks to Adam as though he could have died years ago and simply not been informed.
‘We can drop all this, if you like,’ says Adam, trying to keep his voice light. ‘Drop me at a station, I’ll shoot off home. I had enough problems already without, y’know, all this …’
Irons gives something like a smile. ‘Don’t wet your pants. You’re not in bother.’
Adam looks sceptical. ‘Would I know if I was?’
‘Yes.’
Adam grinds his teeth. He wishes he could open the window and gulp down some fresh air. The smell in the car is making him feel sick, reaching into his throat, stroking his thorax, climbing into his belly.
‘So?’ asks Adam.
‘So what?’
Adam waves his arms. ‘So what just happened?’
There is a foul noise as Irons sucks his cheek. ‘Look, Mr Jardine isn’t as young as he was. Alison’s very good at the business and Timmy sometimes feels a bit of a spare part. He’s always up at the house with those friends of his. Mr Jardine’s made them a room of their own with those computers they like and videos and whatnot, and he doesn’t mind them hanging around, but they keep asking him about the old days. About before. They’ve read all the books and the papers and heard all the stories about who he was. They want to impress him, that’s all.’
‘So why did they think doing me over would impress him?’
Irons looks vaguely apologetic. ‘I do as I’m asked, son. And I was asked to make sure you didn’t get hurt.’
‘Asked by who?’
Irons glares at the road. ‘Just keep your powder dry. It’s worked out well. You’re getting an audience with the queen.’
‘The queen?’
Irons sighs, a plume of grey. It might be smoke, or the last dregs of his soul. ‘No more questions, eh? You sound like a copper.’
‘A copper? You must be joking.’
‘I am, actually. I know you’re not a copper.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Feel your pulse. It’s still pulsing. So, take that as proof.’
‘My brain is hurting. Seriously, let’s call it a day …’
‘Shush, lad. Be a good boy.’
They drive in silence a little while longer, through ever smaller towns and down windier, tree-lined roads. Adam broods and worries and thinks, briefly, about trying to make a call with the mobile phone in his pocket. One glance at Irons is enough to dissuade him.
Five minutes later, the car is turning right through black, wrought-iron gates onto a gravelled drive, hemmed by bare trees and bushes with thick green leaves. The driveway opens onto a large forecourt, which borders an immaculate green lawn, lush with dew and fine rain.
Against the darkening sky, sits the house. Opulent. Extravagant. Broodingly wealthy and eccentrically frayed around the edges.
‘And they say crime doesn’t pay,’ says Adam, quietly.
‘They’re wrong,’ says Irons. ‘But Mr Jardine isn’t a criminal. He’s a businessman.’
‘They all say that,’ says Adam.
‘No, they don’t,’ says Irons, pulling up beside a yellow VW Beetle with flowers painted on its side, in front of the steps which lead up to the house. ‘I’m a criminal, and I admit it.’
‘What they get you for?’ asks Adam, fizzing with energy. He tries too hard to be funny. Fails. ‘Fashion Police?’
‘No, son,’ says Irons, taking the last inch of cigarette out of his mouth and turning his black, shark-like eye on Adam. ‘I’m a killer.’
NINETEEN
4.02 p.m.
A curvy, middle-aged woman in an expensive dress, black raincoat and leather boots emerges from the double-doors at the front of the house. She has blonde hair running to grey, cut into a layered bob. There is a softness to her face that suggests a melted kind of beauty: that if she could just be twisted and bound at the scalp, she would pass for twenty-five. She wears enough fake tan to offer decent protection in the event of a punch to the jaw.
The woman stops as Adam gets out of the car. She stands completely immobile, the wind tugging at her clothes, one hand on her hip, the other pushing her hair back from her eyes. Her lips, a shade of pink that is too young for her, part slightly, as though receiving the sacrament. She looks at Adam as if he were a risen martyr.
Irons, his strange aroma hanging ripe on the air, sees something in the woman’s expression. He turns and looks at Adam, again. Adam feels as though he were enduring a living autopsy: as if he were pinned out, skin folded back, a subject for dissection and analysis. It is all he can do not to pull his jacket over his head and hide.
‘Hi,’ says Adam, unnerved. He feels silly. Out of place. Doesn’t know what to say or hope for.
The woman seems to shake herself out of her trance and walks towards Adam. He can feel her eyes on him like an X-ray. He has never been devoured this way before, never been consumed so entirely in a gaze. He is self-conscious, as though undergoing an inspection, an assessment. He feels tested, weighed, on the scales of her stare.
She leans in as if to kiss him, then checks herself, extends a hand adorned with jewellery. Adam takes it, and feels her hand tremble in his.
‘Hi,’ she says, on a voice that dances on the air like a dandelion seed. Then, more firmly: ‘I’m Alison Jardine. I understand there was a mix-up?’
He gives her his best smile. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry about all this.’
‘All this?’ she asks. ‘Probably my fault. Blundering about, causing mischief … Well,’ she continues, and rubs her hands together as if she’s cold, ‘all sorted now, I hop
e.’ Then, to Irons: ‘Was there any trouble? Where’s he at?’
‘Off in a sulk,’ says Irons. ‘Apparently we don’t know what he’s capable of.’
‘Oh we do,’ says Alison, showing teeth. Her gaze zeroes in on the bruise on Adam’s cheek. She glances at his hand, checking for signs of violence. She nods to herself.
‘I don’t really know what’s going on,’ says Adam, his guts filling with dirty water as he looks from one to the other. He wants to call home. Hear his daughter’s voice. Wants to call his mum. ‘It’s a lovely place you’ve got here. Been here a while, have you? I’ve got a little semi-detached. Portsmouth. It’s okay, I suppose. Kids have kind of wrecked it but it makes it feel more homely. Rent it, of course. I did own a place but I signed it over to the mum of my little girl. Tilly, she’s called. The girl, not her mum …’
Adam stops talking, embarrassed with himself. Irons lights another cigarette. ‘We need to chat,’ he says to Alison. ‘I think I’m missing a piece of this story.’
‘I’ll explain later,’ says Alison, chewing her lip and returning her eyes to Adam’s face. She drinks him in as if through a straw.
‘I reckon I’m just about caught up,’ growls Irons. He gives Adam his attention. ‘Alison here doesn’t let many people come to the house. Her business is her business, and I don’t ask more questions than I have to, but when she asks me to give her son a slap and to keep you safe from harm, and then to bring you home for a nice little chat, some part of my brain gets all fizzy with static. But I’ll leave you be. I’ve got things to sort out. Thoughts to roll around in. I won’t be far away though. And I can move faster than you’d think.’
Adam fights the urge to look away. He meets his own reflection in the mirrored surface of Irons’s glasses. ‘I’m grateful,’ he says, and means it. Then he forces himself to put out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Irons takes off his right glove. His hands are covered in tattoos: black-blue ink, cobwebs and sea-beasts, twisted and snarled on great stony knuckles. Adam doesn’t clinch at the connection. Feels Irons’ fingers close over his; registering the warm dry roughness of the older man’s palm against his own. Irons’ breath seems to stick in his gullet. An unexpected gasp catches in his throat. He coughs, painfully, and breaks contact, punching himself in the chest with his hand.