This one night we were sitting round and Mark was sober. He’d had a couple of spliffs but nowt to send him OTT, no crack or coke or booze or owt like that. He was in that silly phase, when you’ve had a bit of puff and you’re giggling and messing and can’t take stuff serious. We were sat in the living room and Duggy was out, and Mark was tickling me to death, so’s I couldn’t hardly breathe, the way men like to do to women sometimes, God only knows why. When he stopped and I was laying there, my head on his knee, tired out and grinning my head off, I remembered I loved him. All the shit he’d done recently and it were gone, in a flash, just cause he was in a good mood for a change. I thought about what I needed to tell him, and it wiped the big soppy smile off my face. Mark noticed straight off.
‘What’s a matter?’ he said, sitting up.
‘I fount summat out. About why Bek ran off,’ I said.
Mark screwed up his eyes then, and sat up straighter. ‘Go on.’
I explained what was hid in Duggy’s room. I left out the bit where Bek’d showed me, and we talked about what to do, and how I helped her sort things so’s she could run off. I took him up to Duggy and Bek’s room and showed him the loose floorboard and the stash of notes and tapes Duggy’d hid there. He asked me how comes I’d found them, and I said I’d been suspicious for a while, told him about the pill Duggy didn’t take and how he’d calmed Jon down, all professional. ‘Bek running off crowned it. I knew summat was up so I came and had a look for me-sen,’ I told him. Mark nodded, and held onto his chin and looked all thoughtful and serious as I told him and showed him everything I knew.
‘How long yer known bout all this?’ he said.
‘Since last night, when Duggy was out,’ I said. He screwed up his eyes at me then, as if he knew I was lying. I wondered if I’d done summat to give me-sen away, like the way Bek played with her hair and licked her teeth. If he had his suspicions then he didn’t say owt, so maybes it were all in my head. He walked up and down the room looking deep in thought, and I got all nervy thinking I hadn’t seen owt of his reaction, not yet. He sat down on the mattress and crossed his legs.
‘Well he’ll have ter go, won’t he?’ he said and looked up at me. I half nodded. I knew he’d say this but it still sent sparks down my neck then through my body. At least he wasn’t going psycho or blaming me. ‘Can yer see any other way?’ he said to me, as if he’d read my thoughts about it. I shook my head. I’d been through it with Bek. ‘Right. You better think-a summatyer can do then. Summat careful so’s it looks like an accident, like what happened wi-Tyneside,’ he said.
I looked him up and down and laughed out loud. ‘Me? Why me?’ I said. I thought he was having a laugh.
‘I did Tyneside for yer.’
‘Yeah, you did that fer me,’ I said, in this sarky tone of voice.
‘What yer try-ner say?’ he said.
‘Nowt,’ I said, and started stomping towards the door.
‘Kez,’ he said, all soft, calling me back. I hated that. I hated the way people used the different ways of saying my name. How they called me Kerrie-Ann if they wanted to lecture me, specially the teachers at school and older people like Mrs Ivanovich and my mommar. But if they wanted me to do summat for them it were ‘Kez’, or ‘Kezza’ or even ‘Kerrie-Anna’ in this teasy way. That bit more friendly, creeping round me so’s they could get what they wanted. I hated most of all that it worked on me. I turned back.
‘C’mon, have a seat here a minute,’ he said, tapping the space beside him on Duggy’s mattress. I sat down.
‘My hands are dirty with this Phil nob, and I did it fer you, no matter what yer think. Do us a favour and help out here. Yer need to learn how ter deal wi-this side of the business anyways,’ he said. He put this as if bumping someone off was just one of them things you had to do in our line of work, like how divers have to go underwater, and electricians to the top of huge cooling towers. It made me wonder what’d gone off behind my back. It sounded like he’d already learned to ‘deal with this side of the business’ on a regular basis.
‘I don’t see why,’ I said.
He kissed me then, on the lips. He held my face with his two big hands and pulled away, making me look into his eyes, ‘Just trust me, Kez,’ he said. And that was the thing. I didn’t trust him. I might of loved him, but trust was a different thing altogether.
‘Yer got ter be careful though,’ he said.
‘How d’yer suggest I do it then?’ I asked him.
He took this as me saying I was in, and patted me on the back and called me a good gell. ‘Tek him joyriding and mek sure he gets threw out the car or summat. Mek it look like a good, old-fashioned road crash and cover yer tracks,’ he said.
‘Okay, that’s easy then. I’ll just steal James Bond’s car wi-an ejector seat or summat, shall I?’ I said.
Mark laughed then, and I half smiled, and he nudged me like he wanted to get me to laugh again, but I ignored that. ‘Yer’ll think of a way,’ he told me. ‘Clever gell like you.’ He put his arm round me then, squeezed me tight. His skin was warm and nice next to me, but I shivered. It’d struck me, you see. How clever he was when it came to killing. And I’d took the money off I’d saved, a bit at a time, and bought a load of them bond things Bek’d told me about. If he cottoned what I was up to then it wouldn’t be no trouble for him to sort me out. Jon too. He’d do it in a flash and make sure no one knew it had owt to do with him.
‘You cold?’ he said, noticing me shiver.
‘Someone walked over me grave,’ I said.
‘Yer’ll be alright,’ he told me, and I guess he thought I was worrying about Duggy. ‘Besides owt else, yer a better rider than me. Yer’ll have more chance-a pulling it off, not being nasty,’ he said.
He was right. We’d took to doing a lot of joyriding since Bek’d showed us the ropes. If we fancied going somewhere, we’d sort out an old car off the estate and use it, bring it back to where we found it. We’d never properly steal from them like us on the estate, see. But we would from the nobs who lived up Aspley and Wollaton. We’d take their posh cars without giving it much thought, drive them round fast as we could. Prang them sometimes, if we felt like it. Sometimes we’d take them back so’s the owners didn’t even know they’d gone. Mostly though, we brought them back to the estate and torched them, made a little bonfire to amuse our-sen. It were better than being bored.
We’d took to racing too. Stealing the fast cars, which were much harder to get into and wire, then doing the circuit round Ilkeston and Stabbo and the back end of Kimberley. That was the best thing. We’d always drop some speed or ecstasy before we did, so’s our hearts’d be racing fast as the engines. Nowt felt better, I swear it didn’t. The drugs could of been designed for it. I won a few of the races. Jon went faster but he crashed a lot, and Mark was rubbish. I reckon the amount of smack he’d always got in his system slowed all his reactions down, and made it so’s he wasn’t as bothered as the rest of us about going fast.
But even though I was good at driving cars fast and crashing them without hurting no one, we did it for laughs. I really couldn’t see how I could turn these skills to killing, not without taking me-sen out too. I wondered if that was part of Mark’s plan and looked him in the eye to see if there was a shred of guilt about him. If there was, then he hid it well. But he noticed me looking and stared back at me, all quizzical.
‘You alright?’ he said. And I nodded.
I wasn’t all right, though. I couldn’t of been more stressed about what Mark wanted me to do. It did my head in. Mark was out on it all the time, the few weeks after I’d told him about Duggy. For the first time in my life I was jealous of his addiction, wished I had somewhere to turn the way he did, summat I could put inside me to take all the worries away. I remembered what it felt like. I wasn’t stupid, I knew the stuff Uncle Frank’d given me that time I got beat up was smack, probably shitty stuff too knowing that wanker. I could recall like it were yesterday how good it’d felt, though, how it’d took al
l the pain I could of ever had and lifted it, made it float off. I liked my chemicals, speed and ecstasy and stuff like that, but all they did was get you up and going. They weren’t painkillers, not like what Mark had.
This one night, a couple of weeks on from me telling Mark about Duggy, Jon wanted to go raving. I still wasn’t comfortable about him doing that kind of shit on his own. Besides owt else, I knew what kind of rubbish other dealers were selling them days, in the name of E. It were more than just pills cut with other stuff by then. Some on it just wasn’t MDMA at all, but other nasty chemicals what you wouldn’t want no one to take. I wanted to make sure if Jon was taking stuff, that he should get summat decent. And I fancied it me-sen to tell you the truth, getting out of my head and dancing the night away. It were summat I hadn’t done in a while.
‘I’ll come wi-yer,’ I said. And Jon didn’t argue, maybes cause he wouldn’t of dared, but maybes cause he knew I had the best pills in town anyhow, and he wouldn’t have to pay for them.
The rave was on a farm the other side of Strelley. Some local farmer who was a bit of a hippy’d set it up, given over his land in the name of peace, love and understanding. This was what you got out of MDMA, I spose. I know we never had no trouble at raves, not unless there was alcohol round as well. Not like you got downtown in Nottingham. Jon and me walked through Strelley Village, downing pills and water as we strode past the church. I’d walked through there at night before, a load of times, with Mark. Phil used to bring me down the village to get up to stuff, when he couldn’t at his flat cause his gellfriend was staying. It’d always seemed a friendly place before, even with all the graves and the old, quiet church. It didn’t this time though. Shadows danced round the churchyard and it seemed like they was taunting me. We know what you’re on with, they said, peeping from behind the oldest headstones, the ones so black with what the rain’d left behind you couldn’t read the names no more.
‘Hurry up,’ I said to Jon.
‘Where’s the fire?’ he said. He smiled. ‘The field’ll still be there in five minutes.’
‘I’m cold,’ I said, and shivered to prove it.
He looked at me funny. It were midsummer night and the air round us was warm as a bath. Then he shook his head and laughed. ‘Sometimes I just don’t get yer, Kez,’ he said. Jon wasn’t after owt when he called me Kez. He always called me that, whether he was mad with me or wanted summat or was trying to give me a lecture. It were just my name to him, not summat he used to get his own way. To manipulate me, as Duggy would of put it. I looked at my not-so-little brother and felt a surge of love for him. Not like the way I felt about Mark, that black keening love you feel for a boyfriend when things aren’t quite right. But summat stronger. Summat thicker than water. I put my arm in his and he smiled down at me. We skipped along the road and I didn’t feel cold no more, had forgot about the graveyard.
By the time we got to the farm, we’d come right up. The pills we’d took were strong as you like, needed to be to be any good to me them days. We were grinning our little heads off. I looked at everyone gurning round me. It were ridiculous to look at, like summat was wrong and everyone was trying to smile anyway. Cept their eyes were wet and haunted with it, and you could tell people were gritting their teeth that way you do on E. The farm was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, at least, since the last time I’d been E’d up to the eyeballs. Fairy lights’d been strung over the hedges and dry stone walls what lined each field. The place was full of people, all young and beautiful and as full of it as me and Jon. Huge great speakers were made tinny by the sheer size of the venue, couldn’t compete with the open air and the sky what went on for ever and ever. I looked up and loved the stars. I hugged and kissed Jon. We went and danced to the empty music. In the fields it were like the light breeze was blowing the sound away, but we didn’t care.
Some bloke I’d never met before grabbed me from behind. I giggled. I turned and kissed him. Then we were snogging like there was no tomorrow. I turned back to my brother, who was looking a bit put out. I smiled at him, and brushed my hand down his arm, flirty almost. I let it hover near his hand, just touching his skin. His skin was so beautiful. So smooth and unworried, such a rich chocolate colour in the moonlight. It felt silky under my hand and I told him so. Before I knew it he was hugging me, then this bloke what I’d been snogging a minute before. That was the way it worked, see. You couldn’t get mad with no one, not for more than a minute, even if you tried your hardest.
‘Look,’ some gell said, pointing up. The sky was amazing. It were like the sun hadn’t completely gone down that night, and there was some of its red light leaking into the darkness like blood over leather. It looked like summat out a science fiction story, all smoky and industrial. God knows what made it look that way, maybes summat from the power station a couple of junctions down the motorway. Or smoke from the Player’s or Boot’s factories, not far away in the Rylands. I was staring so hard at the sky my neck started hurting. I tried to lean back and go with it, and lost my footing, started falling. I laughed. I was scooped up by Jon before I hit the ground and then we were both laughing. Laughing and laughing so’s we couldn’t stop. I’d forgot all about Duggy. I couldn’t of remembered about him if I’d had to.
We didn’t stay for sunrise in the fields, with the speakers not strong enough to make headway against the midsummer air. We walked off, and headed back towards home. We walked towards the motorway, but hadn’t remembered the right route from the farm and found our-sen a long way from the bridge. I was walking towards it, and Jon came up behind me, ran into me and dug his hands into my ribs, tickling me like mad. I couldn’t hardly stand it, but I giggled again. The muscles in my cheeks, at the corners of my mouth, well they were hurting like mad I’d laughed and smiled and gurned so much.
‘There in’t no one on the motorway. It’s quiet as owt,’ he said, turning me to face it.
‘Yer mad. Tockally, utterly mad,’ I told him. But he just kept saying look, look, look, and the pair on us kept falling into each other, and laughing again.
We stood on the edge of the huge road. Jon was right, there wasn’t much traffic at all. Occasionally a huge truck would lumber along past us, whistling away, up to Leeds, going faster even than our hearts were. God it were beautiful.
It made me think then. There I was, standing beside the ugliest road in the world, watching big monster trucks shudder past, shooting out spent diesel. I even liked the way the diesel smelled.
Jon took my hand. ‘Close yer eyes,’ he said. I told him he was mad again, but he shushed me, and we both laughed. Then we ran into the road like we had wings on our feet, eyes still closed. But I could hear summat coming, a massive vehicle, a truck or lorry. I squeezed Jon’s hand tight. I could hear both our breathing, made faster by the running, as well as the drugs. We were running flat out, hands squeezed tight into each other’s, eyes closed fast. I didn’t know whether we were running into the path of the truck or away from it. I just went with it. I heard brakes squeal, and the screech of a big suspension trying to adjust as someone made it veer quick to the left. What the fuck was he doing in the fast lane anyways when they wasn’t owt else on the road? We fell into the central reservation and lay on the grass. All’s I could hear was our breathing. We were alive. It sounded so beautiful. There it were, that word again, the b word, kept making its-sen heard inside my head over and over. Beautiful this, beautiful that. Like owt, it lost its resonance repeated like this over and over. It didn’t mean owt no more. All’s it meant was I’d had some pills.
We made it safe across the other carriageway, to our side of the motorway. Thing was, we had to walk over to the bridge to get back to Strelley anyway, so it’d all been a stupid waste of time. A very stupid waste of time in hindsight. It’s the things you do on drugs what makes them dangerous.
We walked through Strelley, still on one. We made our way across Wigman Road. Even that looked frigging ‘beautiful’ through my E-coloured specs.
We went int
o Strelley Park. Jon smiled at me and squeezed my hand. We’d been like Siamese twins since we’d crossed the motorway together and we’d both done another pill on the way back. The sun was rising. Midsummer dawn. We lay down on the bowling green. Now that was beautiful. The grass was wet and lush, thick and even as if it were fake and made from fabric. You could feel the love put into it as you laid against it, the warmth came up to greet you. Course, the parkie would of killed us if he’d caught us laying on it.
The sun rose, casting more blood and pus into the mucky air up round the clouds. I grinned my head off. It were beautiful, I knew that. I was at least using the word proper then. Jon was gorgeous, lit by the yellows and reds and what was left of the moon. We laid there, and birds started to sing, and we could see the grass was green again, and that our jeans were blue, not black. I hadn’t noticed before that instant that everything was black and grey and mud brown at night, even once your eyes got used to the dark and you could see.
‘Happiness is cheap in the East Midlands, Kez, me duck,’ said Jon. I looked up and saw the sun, a broken yolk in the egg-white sky. He was right. Two quid wholesale, them pills’d cost us, and here we were laying on grass and in love with the light.
I was eighteen years old and I was invincible. That morning everything was amazing. The light, my brother, everything. Amazing. Ecstasy does exactly what it says on the packet.
TWENTY-TWO
The council estates at Broxtowe and Aspley are laid out in ever decreasing circles. I am an authority on this cause I have floated above them, listening to them sing and vibrate.
I don’t know the technical details of what ecstasy does to your brain, cept the papers say it leaves holes when it’s done. What it does to me is this: I talk all posh, use long words I’ve picked up from books. Jon was always telling me I read too much, but specially when I was E’d up to the eyeballs. And everything makes sense, life and death and fate and collective unconscious and all that shit. The whisper-thin layer between body and soul goes permeable for an instant. I slip through it, easy as water. And I remember stuff I’ve not thought about for years. Like how my great mommar ran off aged fifteen and a half, carrying her cousin’s birth certificate with her to Gretna Green so’s she could get married. That my mommar was there at the wedding, curled up like a ball inside her mam, but it wasn’t ever legal. Mommar’d told me all this before she ran off and I’d forgot all about it. It’s like the pills connect things up in your head, get the electrics working, fire up the synapses. Anyone who tells you they’re just about happiness and dancing is missing the point.
The Killing Jar Page 18