The Killing Jar

by Nicola Monaghan

  ‘I’m not a junkie,’ I said.

  He smiled, one of them cocky wanker grins. ‘Did I say yer were?’ I was opening the door then and he said, ‘Have you thought, Kerrie-Ann, that he might not want ter be found?’ It were strange, to hear him use my name like that after calling me by my surname the rest of the time. I didn’t turn back towards him. I slammed the door and carried on walking. Summat cracked inside me.

  Mark, I thought. Fucking Mark Scotland. Like Duggy’d said, the man was a psycho and’d manipulated me. All this Phil stuff, then with Duggy as well. And now Jon’d gone and it were summat to do with him, I knew it were.

  I didn’t go home. I marched up the road towards Strelley Village instead. There was a chill in the air by then, not much, but enough so’s I could see the steam of my breath in front of me. It reminded me of when I was little, them toy fags we used to buy, and how we used to pretend we were really smoking them on days like this.

  I went up the churchyard. There was no one about cept for them as were tucked away inside the Broad Oak drinking beer. And them tucked up under the soil, course. I lit a fag and sat on the wall, breathed in the smoke. It were proper blustering around me, nasty cold droplets of rain being whipped up and into my face, but I was so fired up inside I hardly felt it. I put my feet on the wall and looked round me. Them old gravestones what you couldn’t read no more, they could put the wind up you, they really could. It reminded you how short life was, and how long you’d be dead for.

  I went for a wander round the graves, looked at the old ones first, then into the newer part of the yard. I read what it said and wondered how people’d died, specially the young ones. Road crashes, cancer, overdoses, what’d killed them in their prime like that? In my head, I saw the corpses underneath where I was walking, beginning to rot and mould and get ate by God knows what all. In the oldest graves, the skeletal remains, cold and white as painted china, empty eye sockets what stared up for good into the dark few inches above them. It freaked me out, and I decided there and then I wanted to be cremated like Duggy. I wondered about Jon. For the first time it struck me, he was probably dead. I wished I could be certain, one way or the other. It sounds stupid, I know, but it’s almost worse when someone’s missing. There’s summat about being human what makes you want an ending. Closure, like the boggers call it in America. But it’s true.

  I walked home then, less angry but well upset instead. I came in the door and called to Mark, but there was no answer. I went upstairs and found him, spreadeagled on the bed, white and motionless. I thought of how he didn’t look that different to the corpses I’d imagined down Strelley. I went downstairs and put the telly on. I flicked through the channels, but there were nowt on cept this boring football match, Arsenal versus Tottenham. I sat there thinking about Jon, what might of happened to him. About the corpses up the road at Strelley. I closed my eyes and remembered the last night I was with him. I could almost see him, sat with me at the kitchen table, videoing. I was wishing the inside of my head was like a videotape so’s I could play it back, get clues as to whether he was thinking about running off. Then I realised I could play back what’d happened for real. It were all on tape cause Jon’d put it there.

  I went to the front door, to the stand where we normally put the camera. It wasn’t there. I had a good look round the kitchen to see if it’d been left round there somewhere, but there wasn’t no sign of it. The next sensible place to look would of been Jon’s room, I spose, but I didn’t want to go in there. The day he’d gone I’d searched it top to bottom for clues as to where he’d be, and why he’d gone. I hadn’t been exactly looking for the camera, so I couldn’t of sworn it wasn’t there, though I was sure I would of noticed it. I could remember how the room’d been. Random things strewn across the bed. It smelled of spliff, and of Jon of course. It didn’t look the way someone’d leave a place if they’d got plans to go off somewhere. It were too depressing to look round it and see he’d took nowt with him, it didn’t give me much hope. I didn’t want to be reminded of all this shit, so I had a look round the front room first. I rooted through things, then pulled the sofa out. The camera was sitting there on the floor. The light wasn’t flashing, the battery dead as the people in the churchyard.

  I took out the tape and put it inside the adapter thing so’s I could play it on the video. I pressed the button. And there was Jon, sitting with me at the kitchen table, in fuzzy but glorious colour. We were laughing like mad. All’s you could see of Jon was his arm, and his hand some of the time. But I could hear his deep voice as he moved the camera round the room and we both talked shit and laughed our heads off.

  There were this close-up of my face he’d done what scared the hell out of me. The look in my eyes mostly, all glossed over and drugged up. But how pale my skin looked too, white as death, white as Mark when I’d seen him a few minutes before. I didn’t look no better than one of Mark’s cronies, no better at all. I was too skinny as well, arms and legs like the greenstick trunks of new trees. I looked like the sort of gell I’d clock and assume was a junkie. No wonder they’d done that down the police station. It were like watching someone else. The gell in the video kept laughing at nowt, as if in preparation for the sick joke life was about to play on her. Then she freaked out. It took all the strength I’d got to carry on watching. You don’t ever want to see yer-sen like that, I’m telling you.

  Me and Jon and the camera climbed the stairs. The film shot between floorboards, and the old peeling wallpaper, and my arm or leg or belly, and we stumbled upstairs, and Jon garbled on about this and that. In my room, Jon must of put the camera down, cause all’s I heard was muffled sounds of us talking, and saw the bottom of the divan bed, all blurred on the screen. Then me again, sleeping, and Jon going on about me looking all peaceful and being quiet for a change instead of nagging. None of the words he said sounded like summat you’d say if you knew you were off that night.

  He went downstairs then, still filming and talking crap. As he got to the bottom of the staircase, in front of the door, it opened and Mark came in. Jon was filming him, and you could tell Mark wasn’t happy about it. He screwed up his eyes at Jon and told him to fuck off. He went through to the living room but Jon didn’t fuck off, he followed him instead. I thought how he should of known better, but then he was out on it so I doubt he was thinking straight. Mark sat down on the sofa.

  ‘This here’s Mark Scotland, infamous scary drug dealer who’s so-ard he think it’s a-right to pick on his gellfriend,’ Jon said. My heart beat faster hearing this. I wanted to scream at him not to goad at Mark, but course this’d happened two weeks before and there was as much point telling Jon as they’d be yelling at Romeo not to down that poison.

  ‘Fuck off, Jon,’ Mark said, rolling up a doobie and waving his arm across his face as if to say ‘no photos please’.

  ‘But no, Mark. Audience’d like to know if yer think it’s a-right to go round walloping gells one, or if yer just think it’s okay when it’s me sister,’ Jon said.

  Mark’s face went all scary then, that way it did, like summat wild on the attack. He came at the camera like a fucking mad thing, arms and legs all over, laying into my brother, who was giving it summat back as well. They fell onto the sofa as they were fighting. I was shaking as I watched, scared witless of what I might of seen next. But the camera flew out Jon’s hands and behind the sofa, and all’s you could see then was the out of focus pictures of the flower pattern material it were made of. I could hear stuff though. Screaming and shouting. How’s I could of slept through it were a mystery to me. I spose it were all them Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds dreams what I’d had that night. I’d tried to wake up, over and over, I remembered that, but I’d been too deep gone. I wanted to stop the tape, turn it off before I found summat out what I didn’t want to know. But I couldn’t, see. I needed my ending too bad.

  I didn’t get it though. All’s I heard was a wild yelp from Jon, and another shout, then the sound of summat heavy falling, and doors slam
ming. Then silence. It could of been Jon being hit over the head with a hammer, and dragged out the room, and Mark slamming about mad with him still. Or it could of just been a fight, and Jon storming off in a temper, careering out into the night taking nowt with him. It were impossible to tell. I rewound and played the tape a few times, but I got no further trying to work out what’d gone off. There was no blood on the bare floor, or the sofa. Nowt to make me think Jon’d been hit with the hammer in that room. If this was what’d happened, then Mark’d done a proper job of cleaning up after his-sen.

  It didn’t matter though. Dead or alive, I knew I wasn’t going to see my brother again. I could tell by the sounds on the tape how much my psycho boyfriend’d scared him. Mark, the bloke who reckoned he loved me more than owt else in the world. Fucking liar. It might of been true a few years before, way back whenever. But if he could attack my brother like that, then he was full of shit. All’s he cared about was his-sen, and getting his next fix, nowt else mattered. If he’d really loved me he would of took care of Jon, like he did that time I was away.

  I played Mark’s face over and over, the way he’d come at Jon like the psychopath Duggy’d described in them notes he’d made. It were a face of pure evil, all snarled up with hate and focused on destroying summat I loved. Tears streamed down my face. I didn’t care if Mark saw me cry then, I couldn’t of cared less what he thought of me at all. I knew it were important to make sure he didn’t realise I’d seen the tape, though. For a few weeks I’d been filling the suitcase. As well as putting premium bonds in the money belts, I’d packed clothes and other stuff I wanted too. I was ready to go any day. I’d been taking more risks to get it sorted since Jon’d gone. I took the tape out the player, then out the case thing, and put it back in the camera, threw that back down behind the sofa where I’d found it.

  I went upstairs, looked at Mark laying there, all peaceful. There was a bit of colour coming back in his cheeks then, and I knew he wasn’t as out on it as he’d been. I thought about taking the hammer and smashing his head in, then getting my suitcase and running off. But I didn’t have the guts for it, and that was the truth. Besides, he was too close to waking up by then and it’d just as likely end up being me who’d got their head mashed up. I had some other ideas though, to do with the poison what was buried in my garden. I was full of ideas about that.

  TWENTY-SIX

  My tongue was bleeding from biting on it, but I said nowt to Mark about the video I’d found, and what’d happened with Jon. Every time my brother’s name came up in the conversation, crunch, teeth into tongue. It would of been stupid to say summat at that point, with everything ready for me to get away. Specially when Mark went to pains to tell me it’d all be alright, like he knew everything in the world. It were the faking what pissed me off the most. What he’d done to Jon was bad enough, but pretending he knew nowt was taking the piss. Making a big deal of reckoning Jon’d be all right, only a right wanker’d do shit like that.

  We were sitting watching telly one night. I was fidgeting, and kept going in and out the kitchen fetching stuff. A glass of water. Then crisps, though I didn’t even eat them. I made a cup of tea for the pair on us. I just couldn’t sit still.

  ‘What the fuck’s up wi-yer, Kez?’ Mark said.

  ‘I just got the fidgets,’ I said. It were a word we used to describe the moods Mark got into from time to time, and it wasn’t typical of me. Mark frowned at me, side on.

  ‘What you bin taking?’ he said.

  ‘Nowt.’

  ‘You an’t been at me smack, ay-yer?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said. I didn’t say owt for a minute, stared at the telly. ‘What if I had?’

  ‘Yer don’t want ter gerr-inter that Kez, I’m telling yer,’ he said.

  ‘Halle-bloody-luia,’ I said. Mark half smiled, and took a gulp of tea. He burped dead loud.

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ I said.

  He answered with another loud belch. God knows, given all what’d gone off, why it bothered me, but I had to leave the room. I went upstairs and opened the window, leaned out and breathed in the air. I could smell bonfire, and heard a firework go off in the distance. It were only October, so problies kids fucking about. My heart flipped at the thought it might of been Jon. He’d always liked fireworks, since he was well little. He’d learned how to set them off when he was nine, Mark’d showed him. I watched over the park for a while, hoping to see his dark shadow heading back towards the house. He’d be chewing summat, a match or toothpick or whatever he could get his hands on. Spitting bits of it sideways onto the concrete. Swaggering. I could see him clear as if he was really there. Course, he wasn’t.

  I went downstairs then. Mark was probing behind the sofa.

  ‘What yer looking for?’ I said, as if I didn’t have a clue.

  Mark pulled out the video camera, all full on it. ‘Da-daa!’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking fer that all over.’

  ‘Din’t know we’d lost it,’ I said, sitting down and chewing my nails like the camera wasn’t no big deal.

  ‘Yeah, I was messing wi-it when I were out on it, the other day. I cun’t remember for the life on me where it’d gone,’ he said. He let out a shot of laughter. ‘Must of bin well out on it.’

  ‘You must of,’ I said. I stopped talking then, cause the words going through my head were wanker, bastard, liar, cunt, and I would of said one of them out loud if I’d of opened my mouth. Then I sat up. ‘You don’t think they might be summat on the tape what’d help wi-Jon,’ I said. I said this all earnest, I deserved an award for my acting, I really did.

  ‘What d’yer mean?’ he said.

  ‘Well it might of recorded him going off. Or summat happening ter him,’ I said.

  ‘Nah, I checked the tape before, when I were messing wi-it,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you was out on it,’ I said.

  ‘I wan’t that out on it,’ he said. ‘Anyways, the battery’s dead. They’ll of been nowt recorded on it for weeks,’ he said.

  ‘But you was messing wi-it the other night,’ I said.

  ‘There in’t nowt on it,’ he said, raising his voice and turning sharp towards me. I held a hand up in front of my face. He gave me that scary look for an instant, then turned away. He stared straight ahead at the telly. ‘That were two week ago. The tape would of run out-a space. It would of recorded over owt what were there be-now,’ he said.

  I shrugged. I’d backed me-sen into a corner. To say owt else would of given me away. Saying nowt might of as well. ‘I just want ter know what’s happened,’ I said. I think there were this little part of me wanted Mark to tell me about the row. Confess he’d upset Jon and my brother’d ran off cause of it. That’d mean Mark wasn’t a total lying wanker, and Jon wasn’t dead. ‘What d’yer think’s happened ter him?’ I said.

  He turned round on the sofa to face me, looked straight at me, all serious. ‘I wish I could tell yer, Kez. I swear down, I do. I can’t work out why he would of ran off but teenagers are all fucked up, yer know that.’ I didn’t say owt and looked straight back at him, right into them big grey eyes. They didn’t give him away, not one bit. I wondered how much he could tell from my expression. I was thinking liar, wanker, nob, thinking them words hard like I thought my hate could of melted him. He was talking again then, stuff what went in my ears but I hardly heard. Every word he said made my neck prickle. ‘He said summat ter me Kez, night he left. You was in bed and I saw him down here. He was pissed off that I’d hit yer, and said he were sick of having ter live under the same roof as me. I got the feeling then he meant summat more, like he was planning to go off.’

  ‘And you just lerr-im?’ I said.

  ‘He din’t go nowhere, not while I were up. I wun’t-a let him,’ Mark said.

  I had to turn away from him then. Otherwise I would of spat in the wanker’s face. My eyes stung. Mark took hold of my chin and turned my face round so’s I was looking at him. It were like he was even going to decide what I looked at.

&n
bsp; ‘C-mon, Kez. He’ll be back when he’s sulked enough. He’s just tryna put us through it,’ Mark said. But summat about the way he said it didn’t ring true. Maybes he wasn’t such a good actor after all.

  ‘What if he dun’t? What if summat’s happened ter him?’ I said.

  Mark shrugged. ‘You mithering on ter me in’t going ter mek much difference,’ he said. And I could of smacked him one. The only thing what stopped me was the thought of the suitcase buried in the garden. And the poison. It wasn’t worth starting a fight with Mark. I was too close to what I really wanted and he’d took enough from me.

  It stood out to me, that afternoon, how easy he found it to lie. I mean, I wasn’t exactly being open and honest, I know that. But that was hard for me. I wanted to blurt out everything I knew, and it were only the sight of the hammer round Mark’s neck stopped me. I knew him well enough to pick up little signs he was bullshitting, the way he looked to the right, and chewed at his nails, for starters. He was a better liar than Bek – the signs weren’t so extreme, but they were there. Still, he sat calm as you like, looking me in the eye without no emotion, pretending he hadn’t threw his-sen at my brother like a wild animal the night he disappeared.

  His focus’d moved, he was watching the telly now, all intense on that. He’d got the fidgets, and kept glancing at the clock, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he needed his next fix. Them days when he took stuff, he didn’t look high after. There’d been this time when he had. I can remember exactly how it’d been. It were like his whole skin were smiling, and his eyes glowed like cats’ eyes in the middle of the road. But now he only looked relieved, like some doctor’d told him a lump he’d found was just a cyst.