The Killing Jar

by Nicola Monaghan

  At last a nurse came in and I handed her the piece of paper. I hoped the queue in front was not too long and sat down. I stood up again.

  ‘You’re in deep shit,’ I told me-sen. Jon showed up then with two coffees. I took one sip from the plastic cup he gave me and felt sick. I dumped it, full, in the bin nearby. One of the orderlies told me off but I gave him a right dirty look and he shrivelled away from me.

  ‘Miss Hill?’ the nurse called, after a long time. She looked up from her clipboard with a sewn-on smile. I staggered over. She walked into a booth and offered me a seat opposite her. I fell into it.

  ‘What seems to be a matter then?’ she asked me.

  ‘It’s my veins,’ I told her. I showed her the swellings on my arms and hands.

  ‘Were you sitting out in the sun today? Did you get too hot?’ she asked me.

  I nodded, not just cause I had, but I also knew ecstasy made your body heat up. Summat else I’d found out through my reading.

  ‘It’s vasodilation,’ she said. ‘Your body’s way of cooling you down. It’s absolutely nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked her. ‘It cun’t be nowt else?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Look, my hands are the same.’ She held them out for me to inspect, thick blue wires ran up to her fingers like summat out of a plug.

  ‘It’s just—’ I stopped. I was thinking of telling her I’d took some pills the night before but I said nowt. Then I said thank you and rushed out the booth. And I realised that it were the drug what caused this but it wasn’t blood clots, just paranoia. I’d never had it before no matter what I’d took, but I’d seen it happen to Jon loads of times. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t worked it out. I couldn’t believe Jon hadn’t pointed it out to me. I walked over to where he was standing drinking coffee with a face as blank as brown paper. I knocked the cup from his hand.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘what were that for?’

  I didn’t tell him but stormed off, furious with him for being too thick to tell me I was being paranoid after all the times I’d nursed him through it. He really was a tosser at times.

  I stood at the bus stop waiting for a thirty-five to take me home. Jon asked me a couple more times what he’d done, but gave up when he didn’t get no answer. He knew me well enough to shut it.

  I’d never got paranoid before, not with mushrooms or speed or owt so I wondered why it’d happened this time. Then the facts rushed through me, pumping from my heart out to my arms and legs. I’d killed Duggy. In my bullshit self-absorbed state of paranoia it’d gone right to the back of my mind. And now it hit me again, and it were physical shock as I remembered that look he gave me, his face as he flew out the car. Summat was wrong with what I’d done, I didn’t know what.

  I thought proper about what’d happened for a minute. It were bad enough that I’d got him standing up and shoved on the brakes so he got threw out. But then revving up the car and aiming it at him full throttle so’s he didn’t stand a chance, that made me feel sick to the core, and I’m not just using the word to describe being churned up or owt, but proper physical. I walked over to the bin beside the bus shelter and threw up in it. I looked up at Jon as I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. His eyes were screwed up like he was trying to remember summat. I scared me-sen for a minute with the thought the nurse might of been wrong and I was really poorly after all, and thought how I should of told her I’d took some pills. I wondered what the fuck Mark Scotland was on with his rules about revenge, and what was necessary for the business, which fucked up god made him an authority on any of this shit.

  Duggy’s funeral was at Bramcote Crematorium. Turned out he was local, from some village on the way to Derby. He might as well of been from a different planet to us, though, them few miles made a shitload of difference. His mam and dad and his mates spoke with a snobby accent, and I guessed Duggy did too, once upon a time, before he’d had an assignment what’d sent him after us. Loads of people from the estate went, cause he’d made some friends. When we heard how many people were going we decided we’d better too, else it’d look bad being as he was staying with us and all that when it happened.

  Mark looked out of place wrapped up in his funeral suit, with his patchy shaved head and his mad-looking eyes. He wasn’t big enough to look like a bouncer, the way a lot of hard blokes do when they put on a suit. What he looked like was a bloke out of one of them Ska bands what’d been popular just a few years before. I looked rough as you like, as if I’d been crying loads, which was a handy way to look given the circumstances. It were cause I’d not slept proper at all the week before. I just kept playing the thing over and over in my head, what’d happened. My eyes stayed stuck open when I remembered how he’d looked at me when I was pressing on the brake. The once or twice I’d nearly dropped off I’d woke up with a violent start and that feeling like you’re falling down a well and it’d all flooded my brain again.

  Jon’d wanted to come to the funeral as well, said he’d liked Duggy and wanted to pay his respects. I was worried about what he might say to people but I couldn’t stop him coming. I told him to make sure he kept his mouth shut and he gave me that ‘what you going to do about it’ look again, but I knew it were all front by then. Jon was soft as shit.

  It were a cremation they’d decided on. I’d never been to one me-sen. Mrs Ivanovich’d been cremated, but my mam wouldn’t let me go to that, said I was too young and it were morbid. If only she knew the half of it. Not that she cared whether I was too young a few years on when Frank started me running drugs. Not if it meant she got commission in the form of the shit what she needed.

  The coffin sat on this aisle while they talked about Duggy for a bit, went on about what a great bloke he was. Promising student, they said. They didn’t say owt about his police job, and I guessed that was cause he was doing undercover work, stuff what wasn’t finished. They wouldn’t of wanted to draw our attention to that, I thought. I assumed the student stuff must of been some kind of cover. He’d certainly not seemed to be studying owt or going to no college when he was with us and he was older than normal university students, about twenty-five or summat.

  Then there was this music and the conveyor belt started up, and Duggy rolled off in his coffin like summat on a supermarket conveyor belt. I wondered what happened behind the curtain. I know now it’s nowt but I didn’t then. I assumed that was where they burnt him, there and then. I didn’t know they’d take the body off to an industrial furnace in another part of the crematorium and fire him with blue heat so’s everything disintegrated into small bits. I didn’t know when they handed the ‘cremains’ to the relatives they’d be more than dust. There’d be bits of bone and melted hair sitting in the ashes. I found out all that after.

  We went outside the chapel and looked at the wreaths. There were loads. There was this one made of these little white flowers what reminded me a bit of daisies. It said DOUGLAS in big letters, his proper name of course. The letters were like great big daisy chains. I used to make daisy chains, on the park in the middle of the close when I was much smaller. Before Uncle Frank came along. Me and Trace and Jaqui, we used to wear them round our necks like garlands, wrapped in layers on our wrists, and pretend we were rich ladies in big houses. Thinking about them times made me miss my friends from junior school a bit, even if they’d let me down badly that time. Trace’d moved away a few years before, but Jaqui was still living on the estate and we said hello when we saw each other but that was it. I’d seen Trace once, in the middle of town with her boyfriend. She was pushing a pram and looked away when she saw me, but I knew she’d recognised me. Saw it in her eyes, noticed she’d looked away deliberate, the bitch. They weren’t the same kids who’d sat on the park covered in daisies with me, anyway, and neither was I. It’s amazing what you can do when you’re little. You can stand in the middle of Whitwell park wearing clothes close to falling off you with holes in them, and the daisies round your head can be a crown. And you’re a princess. You’re a
fairy. You can magic up whatever you want and it’ll last for ever. Course, then your mommar runs off, your ‘uncle’ Frank comes along and has you selling ‘happiness’ and people beat you up, they’re so desperate to get hold on it. But till all that happens, you believe it. That you’re a princess or a fairy. Being a kid’s a bit like being on pills without the tightening of your jaw and the staying up all night. Without the brain damage they reckon ecstasy gives you.

  Some of Duggy’s mates were stood round talking, wondering how comes he’d landed up riding a kids’ bike through the country lanes near Eastwood. They knew he’d been living on that side of town, one of them said, but he’d been secretive about why. I bet he was, I thought. This Hoorah Henry type said summat then, about when they were at college together a few years before, how Duggy’d always been the brightest, and how sad it were. How Duggy’d been doing a PhD and was writing a ‘thesis’. I didn’t know what this thing was, a thesis, and I tried to earwig without no one noticing. Mark stood dead quiet next to me but I knew him well enough to realise he wanted to do one. I wasn’t having none of it though and dug my feet into the floor. Duggy’s mates went on for a bit about his potential and that, and how he would of made a contribution, all that kind of crap. Then they started talking about his project, ‘the big one’, this one bloke called it.

  My head was going all over the place as I realised what they were talking about. It were like being on mushrooms, listening in to that conversation, cause nowt really made sense and the whole world felt all blurred and out of shape. I caught bits of sentences.

  ‘Upbringing and roots of crime.’

  ‘Criminal personalities, home environment rather than a lab or in prison.’

  ‘More authentic. Genuine reactions.’

  Just snippets like that, without no clue who’d said what. But I got enough to work out what’d been going off. If I’d been thinking real straight I would of been pissed off with Duggy for using us like we were lab rats or summat, but all’s I could think about was how wrong we’d got it when we thought he was police.

  It all made sense: the stuff in the notes and on the tapes. That was what Duggy’s look’d meant, that was what I saw in his eyes before he flew off. You’ve got it wrong, Kerrie-Ann. It were clear as the midsummer sky to me now. I looked up at Mark. He squeezed my hand and looked straight ahead. No reaction, that meant. Keep it steady Kez, he was trying to tell me. I looked at them flowers. DOUGLAS. It were true, he was a student. A perfectionist. Not a nasty traitor bastard like what we’d thought. Words came back to me, stuff I’d read. Psychopath. Sociopathic tendencies. Borderline personality. It were true. I felt my knees go a bit weaker. I didn’t want to stand there with all them people no more.

  ‘Let’s go, Mark,’ I said. But this time he didn’t want to move, problies thought it were too obvious or summat. He stood stock-still and squeezed my hand again. But I wasn’t having none of that neither. I wriggled my hand out from under his and walked off. I couldn’t hang round. I’d be sick or say summat or even faint and give me-sen away.

  ‘Kez!’ Mark called after me. I felt a strong urge to run away from my name, specially that version, the one people always used to get what they wanted, right back to Mam and Uncle Frank when I was about nine. Mark didn’t follow me but Jon did.

  ‘D’yer want ter go home?’ he asked me. And I nodded. And he put his arm round me and we left the crematorium, and walked down the hill back towards home. And it were all right, with Jon there, warm beside me and helping me walk the three quarters of an hour it took to get home.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  When I got back from the funeral I went to bed for a bit, even though it were the middle of the afternoon. I curled up under my quilt, lay there and fell asleep. I was knackered, I can tell you, and what I’d learned’d somehow settled my head, like I’d needed to work it all out before I could relax. Once I knew I was totally in the wrong, and knew why, well, I slept like a baby. It didn’t make no sense. I woke up when Mark came home and slid into bed beside me. He felt cold, even though it were hot outside. I thought it must be summat to do with whatever he’d put inside his body that afternoon, and I couldn’t even guess what that’d be, not the way Mark went on. I lay there wide awake but I didn’t say owt, and kept my eyes tight shut. I didn’t want Mark to know I’d woke up. Once I heard him snoring I got out of bed.

  The black clothes I’d wore earlier were lying beside the bed. I pulled them on over my nightdress quiet as I could and snuck out the room. The door creaked on its hinges as I left and I checked over at the bed, looking for signs of Mark stirring. His chest moved up and down under the quilt, steady. I walked away from the room on the soft pads of my feet, making no sound. I didn’t feel tired no more. My eyes felt stuck wide open, glued, like I’d never sleep again. Like I’d took summat.

  I went to the ‘gram in the dining room and took out some cash. The right amount. Not enough so’s it’d be noticed. Enough so’s it’d begin to add up, sooner or later. I took these slips of paper out my bra, the premium bonds I’d bought, and put the cash inside instead. I’d buy some more bonds the next day. I was going through this routine once a week now, my special savings scheme growing quick. I went to a different Post Office each time, so no one thought owt on it.

  I grabbed a torch and went outside. There was a slight chill in the air, and it looked like it might rain later, a thunderstorm or summat. It’d been hot as owt for days and the air felt ready to crack open and scream. I went to the little pots, lined up down the end of the garden, next to an aborted vegetable patch Jon’d started and lost interest in. I moved the plant pots what marked my spot. I dug, with my hands, scooping out the earth, grabbing as much of it as I could and flinging it aside. It felt good, the warm dry soil in my palms. Like sand. I thought about Duggy, how he’d be fine and dry and warm now, like this soil was. Cooling down from what they’d done to him this afternoon. I thought about Phil, stuck under tons of this stuff down Wilford Hill. I was crying but all I knew about it were the water on my face, covering my cheeks, running away and making a small trail of mud near my knees.

  I felt the handle of the suitcase underneath me and pulled. It wouldn’t come at first and I needed to clear more of the soil from round it before it’d budge. I levered it out and looked at it. I opened it and took out some money belts I’d bought, added the bonds. There was almost enough there now, it’d only be a few more weeks. The moment couldn’t come soon enough, that were the only problem. I thought about my other treasure buried down there and pulled more soil out, grabbed the glass bottle. I pointed the torch at it. The words glistened in the light. Flammable. Volatile. Toxic. Words what described me, my life. It struck me then I could drink some, down it. It wouldn’t be rank. It hardly smelled at all, a bit nutty, nowt worse than that. I could take a few big swigs and go back to bed, never wake up again.

  I looked at my options. The suitcase. The bottle. It were a simple choice. Made more simple when I thought of Jon. The suitcase option meant I’d take him with me. The bottle’d be going it alone. I couldn’t of left him behind to be brought up and used by Mark, maybes killed if he got in the way. I was never going to allow it. I chose the suitcase. But I didn’t throw the bottle away. I buried both my options and flattened the soil, covered it back up with the empty pots to disguise the disturbance. I’d once had plants in them pots, big ones what never flowered, with palm tree leaves. But I didn’t water them enough and they died, eventually I emptied out the soil and dead plants and dried up roots and put them on the pile of rubbish at the back of the garden.

  I was low as I’d ever been after Duggy got cremated. Morbid, mortified, all them words what begin with m and are to do with dying. Inside I felt summat’d died, a part of me what I’d never get back. And I was tired. So tired. I didn’t want to do owt. Mark and Jon both kept saying how I’d feel better if only I got out and enjoyed me-sen. They thought I could grab hold of the sides and pull me-sen up from this big black hole. But I didn’t want to, see.
I wanted to sink under it, the black inky sea, lie back into it and breathe it in. Drown. I wanted to feel worse, not better, and that was the truth of it. I lay about in bed most of the day, wide awake and thinking about what I’d done. When I did get up I didn’t shower or owt, not till Mark said I reminded him of my mam and I asked what he meant. ‘Sitting there looking like a tramp wi-grease dripping from yer hair,’ he said. And so I had a wash. That was about as much pride as I had, though.

  Things were crap with Jon and Mark, and they kept arguing. I almost wished they’d gang up on me, the way they used to, Mark leading Jon astray a bit but at least not trying to hurt him. Mark got sick of arguing with Jon, and of my maudling round. He picked up the stash and some money and went off. Told me he was going to Birmingham to do some business, and if anyone came for stuff, to send them to this bloke we knew in Bilborough. I nodded.

  ‘Yer want me to leave owt fer yer?’ he said. And I shook my head. I wasn’t no addict and I didn’t feel like partying.

  Mark being away improved my mood a bit. At least it felt like Jon was safer, and I slept a bit better. This one morning, Jon walked into my room, happy as Larry. He whistled as he walked over. He sat down on the edge of my bed and touched my forehead, like a mam does to a sick kid.

  ‘Nah. Nowt wrong,’ he said.

  ‘What yer talking about?’ I said.

  ‘I’m not having this, Kez. Yer getting up today.’ He made me sit up and he put summat in my hands. It were this voucher thing, inside a card, for the hairdresser’s in town. ‘It’s yourn, to get yer-sen done up so’s yer can feel better.’ He smiled at me. ‘And later, I’ll score some pills for the pair on us.’ Poor old Jon, thought you could solve owt with a nice thought and some good drugs. But he was optimistic, and it were cute. I couldn’t help but try and do what he wanted.