Shut Eye

by Adam Baron

  Sharon’s eyelids pulled open and fluttered slowly like a moth’s first wings. When she saw me watching her, her face creased into a smile which caused tears to well behind my eyes. I felt so good. So good. I looked into her eyes but couldn’t stop my eyes darting back to her body. She saw this and we laughed together and she did it too, very obviously looking at me, checking me out. Beneath her gaze I began to grow hard again, but I wanted to be calm for a while. I used a fingernail to push some damp strands of hair from her cheek and moved closer to her. I ran my fingertips over her face and she closed her eyes and smiled. I stroked the side of her neck and then her shoulders. The feeling of her skin was tattooed on my fingers. I ran my hand over her left breast and then the right.

  When my thumb began to play with Sharon’s right nipple she moved away a little and, bringing her left hand up to her breast she covered it. She looked uncertain. Sharon’s right nipple had an extra curve to it, a half moon added beneath the aureole. The half moon was raised from the skin and was just the same texture but separate from the rest of the nipple. It was as though someone had double stamped the nipple on to her, and the second time had been slightly out of kilter with the first. I was surprised that she had moved away from me.

  ‘God,’ Sharon said. She blushed, trying to pass it off. I was looking at her but she broke my gaze. ‘I forgot about that.’

  Sharon’s voice was now the one I was used to hearing but it sounded strange, wrong; it didn’t seem to belong here, where we were now.

  ‘It doesn’t matter;’ I said.

  ‘It’s like an extra nipple. Not a whole one but kind of.’ Now Sharon sounded self-conscious, either because she was nervous about what she was saying, or because she was finding it odd to be talking at all. ‘I’ve had it since I was a child.’

  ‘I like it.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘You don’t have to say that.’

  ‘I know. I like it. It’s magical. It makes you … unique.’ I smiled and moved closer. I didn’t want to talk.

  ‘It makes me self-conscious.’ Sharon looked away for a second. ‘It’s why I don’t go topless at the beach; people can’t help looking at it.’

  ‘That’s not what they’re looking at.’

  ‘Ha. It is though. It’s why I didn’t that time when we went away. I could tell Lisa thought I was being square.’ She meant the time Luke, Sharon, myself and the girl I was kind of seeing at the time had gone to Crete for a week.

  ’I thought it was because of me.’

  Sharon reddened a little more.

  ‘Maybe that too,’ she said.

  I moved closer to Sharon and gently pulled her hand away. She didn’t want to let me. I moved even closer until my face was right next to her breast. I stroked her nipple again and kissed it. Slowly I ran the tip of my finger all round it and kissed it again, tugging softly at it with my teeth.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, and I meant it. It was fascinating. It felt good in my mouth. Sharon didn’t answer. ‘I’m not saying it to make you feel better. You don’t believe me anyway, I can tell. But I mean it.’

  ‘I should have told you though,’ she said. ‘I have done in the past. But I didn’t think.’

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t think.’

  ‘It must have been a bit of a surprise though.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t.’

  ‘Billy …’

  ‘It wasn’t a surprise, Sharon. I mean it. I…’ I moved up the bed and looked into her face. The next words came out of my mouth without me thinking about them. I immediately wished I hadn’t said what I did but if I hadn’t it would have only been putting off the inevitable.

  ‘I knew about it,’ I said. ‘I mean it wasn’t a surprise. And I like it, I do.’

  Pain moved swiftly over Sharon’s face like the shadow of a hawk. She smiled seriously at me and kissed me, running her thumb along my eyebrow, but something in the air seemed to change. The room grew suddenly colder. I tried to find a word to say but there wasn’t one.

  I wanted to tell Sharon that Luke hadn’t told me about it in a bad way, a guys’ way, he had just mentioned it once. I wanted to reassure her of that. I think she would have known it though. She wasn’t upset that he’d told me, I was sure she didn’t begrudge the things which Luke had spoken to me about. Including her. It was just the lurch in the stomach as time jerked back into gear. The space was broken. It was Luke. It was the fact of him.

  Sharon bent over and retrieved the duvet and I helped her pull it over us. She turned her bedside lamp off. We lay together and kissed occasionally and tried to smooth away the thoughts that were rising back up to the surface of both of our minds. We both knew what they were. We lay there in the semi-dark and I pretended to be asleep but my eyes were open, staring blankly at the long, cream-coloured curtains covering the Georgian windows. I wasn’t tired any more. My body, though without proper sleep or food for days, and carrying the signs of a beating, felt heavy and good, but my mind nagged at me to turn to it, to consider the living knot of thoughts which twisted inside.

  I pushed the thoughts aside but I couldn’t sleep. Sharon’s head was resting on my chest and I tried not to move but she could tell I wasn’t relaxed and her eyes opened to mine. Even though I could barely make out her face I could read there everything Sharon might have wanted to say to me. I looked into her darkened eyes for a second or two and then sat up a fraction.

  I couldn’t stay there. Sharon lifted her head and I moved from beneath her and pushed myself up from the bed. I slid over to the edge and stood up, immediately crouching down to my trousers, my sweatshirt and the rest of my clothes. I sat down again and dressed slowly with my back to Sharon, balling up the bandage and stuffing it into the back pocket of my jeans. When I was finished I turned back to her.

  Sharon looked at me for a while without speaking. Then:

  ‘Must you?’

  I nodded. Sharon’s face was unreadable as she turned slightly and nodded back, looking down at the duvet.

  ‘I understand,’ she said. I tried to smile. ‘It’s weird for me too.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  I left a second and then I leant over to kiss the top of her forehead. I’d meant a gentle kiss, but she took hold of my head and pressed her lips hard against me, surprising me with the frankness of her passion. It was a message, a clear statement. It was scary and I could feel an edge of hardness in her kiss which set a corresponding one up within me. I pressed my lips back against her before breaking off. I stood up again from the bed and looked down at her. She started to get up but I told her not to worry. I knew my way.

  ‘There’s some money in my purse,’ Sharon said. ‘On the table in the living room.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  I walked into the living room and found the purse. I borrowed some money from it and called a cab. It didn’t come for twenty minutes, during which time I sat in the living room on the edge of the sofa, staring at the carpet. When the door buzzer sounded I looked up at the entry phone and then at the closed bedroom door. I could almost feel Sharon’s body, fitting into mine, her wrist resting on my hip bone. I thought about ignoring the cab and going back in there but suddenly the idea of being with Sharon, there, in her bed, filled me with an incomprehension which was something close to horror. Kissing her. Fucking her. Her sucking me, my tongue moving down between her legs. It was too much, it was way too much. I stood up, pulled the front door open, and walked into the hallway.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I woke to the sound of someone’s voice, far away, a voice which sounded like my own voice but how could it be my voice? I was here, not somewhere else. I was confused. I rolled over, pushing aside the pillow that my head was under.

  It was my voice. My answerphone was telling somebody that I wasn’t in my office at the present time. The message ended and there was a long series of blips, followed by a woman’s voice.

  ‘Mr Rucker, this is Charlotte Morgan. I was won
dering if you could call me. I would very much like to speak to you …’

  I managed to prop myself up on the sofabed and reach over the table to the phone before Charlotte had finished speaking. My ribs bade me a fond good morning as I picked up the receiver.

  ‘Mrs Morgan,’ I said, ‘hello. Yes. William Rucker.’

  I pressed my elbow into my side. There was silence on the other end of the line for a second, before Charlotte Morgan spoke.

  ‘Can you come and see me?’ she said. ‘At home? I’ve taken the day off but we could do it this evening if you wanted.’ Now that I was more fully awake I realized that there was a bitter tinge to her voice. She sounded chastened and small.

  ‘I’ll be an hour,’ I told her.

  * * *

  I stood up from the bed and kept my left arm close against my ribcage. I felt groggy and slow, and my head ached. My muscles had all closed in on me, like I was wearing a straitjacket which was a good size too small. The floor of my office was cold. I wondered what time it was and turned the clock on my desk round. Midday. I heard footsteps in the hall and the distant sound of a typewriter. I pulled the sheets from the bed and stuffed them into a cupboard which had always smelled of turps and paint and still did. Careful of my ribs, I put the bed up, pulled my jeans on, and found a clean T-shirt in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. I scratched my head, touched the stitches there and opened my office door. I wandered out into the corridor.

  Ally’s face dropped in horror when she saw me. In the mirror behind the counter I could see that the left side of my face was a sick yellow colour, sitting on a sweet purple like the skin of a swede.

  ‘I know,’ I said, acknowledging her shock. ‘I didn’t shave this morning.’

  Ally poured me a coffee and held her hand out to my face. Women did that; what the hell good did they think it would do?

  ‘The police were here,’ she said. ‘They asked me questions and they were in your office.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I made them let me watch them, so they didn’t take anything.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I was surprised at Ally’s concern for my property.

  ‘They used your phone a lot.’

  ‘I’ll send them the bill,’ I said.

  Ally asked what was going on. I told her that when I found out she’d be the first to know. I asked her if anyone else had been round.

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Only that other policeman, the one who was here before. Your friend. He came a couple of hours after the other ones.’

  The way Ally told me this made me think she was hiding something; probably the fact that Andy had made an embarrassing pass and she didn’t want to say what a tosser he was because she thought I was tight with him. I suddenly remembered Andy’s strange willingness to come over to my office to discuss Edward Morgan rather than meeting in his natural habitat, the pub.

  ‘What did he want?’ I asked. It can’t have been me, he knew where I was.

  ‘He wanted to know if anyone had been looking for you.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  I carried the cup into my office and sat down at my desk with it. I wanted some space, a little time in which to think, but the number on the answerphone bugged at me. I took a pen and then pressed the play button. Five messages. The first was from the day before yesterday; a man enquiring about my services. I wrote the number down but didn’t think I’d be calling him. I had a little too much on. Then Nicky wanting to know if I was out yet and what was going on. Sharon, the same thing, her voice concerned but efficient. The fourth person who’d called me didn’t leave a name, but it was a voice I recognized.

  ‘Rucker. I hope you get this message. I hope you got the message I was trying to give you the other night. I hope I made myself clear because if you didn’t get the message I’ll have to come back and make sure you do. All right?’ It shocked me to hear his voice. I wanted to keep the message, to save it, as if having that would bring me closer to him. His voice sounded tangible, like I could hold it. Like I could hold his voice to account.

  The final message was from Charlotte Morgan, and it cut out suddenly where I’d picked the phone up.

  There was a pile of letters which I had ignored last night as well as the messages. I picked them up and went through them. The Direct Line people wanted to know if I, Julian Brinsford, wanted to see how much money I could save on motor insurance. The National Geographic, a rates reminder, and a white envelope with neat handwriting and a Doncaster postmark. I tore it open without thinking and pulled out a single piece of blue notepaper stapled to which was a cheque drawn on a building society account. The letter was dated 10 November and it must have been posted the day before I had gone on my fool’s errand to York Way.

  Dear Mr Rucker,

  Thank you for the pictures you sent me of my son. It is such a great relief to know that he is all right. I’m afraid to say that he has not called me, but there was a call the day before yesterday which my husband answered but the caller rang off. It may have been him. If you see him again, please could you ask him to call me.

  A cheque is enclosed. Thank you once again.

  Yours sincerely,

  Diane Lewes

  I read the letter over and then looked at the cheque, pulling it free. I left the letter on the desk and dropped the cheque into the waste-paper bin. I couldn’t really cash it, could I? Certainly, I had found her son, and sent the pictures of him to her which the contract between us had required. But then I’d killed him. I’d killed him by finding him. I’d killed him by taking a murder case and not clearing my backlog first, by involving him in something he should never have been anywhere near. I didn’t know how I had done this, but I didn’t have any doubt that I had.

  I looked at the address Mrs Lewes had written in the top right-hand corner of her letter. There was a phone number with it. My hand reached over to the telephone but I knew I wasn’t going to call her. The police would have told her that Dominic had been murdered. They wouldn’t have told her where his body was found, not yet, not without charging me. I wasn’t going to call her; what the hell would I have to say? I pulled open a drawer of my filing cabinet and looked for Dominic Lewes’ file but it wasn’t there. The police must have taken it. I dropped the letter into the drawer and pushed it shut.

  I tried to think how Dominic had become involved. Someone had seen me taking his picture or talking to him. Who? Rollo. The other kid. The waitress. A little old lady. The girl in his house when I went to call there and asked if he was in. She’d called him Mikey. Who told someone about it? Which one of them? And who did they tell, the man in the hat? Lloyd? I didn’t know. Anything was possible, but nothing seemed anywhere near likely. Had Lloyd tried to fit me up? Maybe, but if he had he must have known I would have fingered him; it was no way of keeping his name out of the papers. And why would he? What then? Was it part of the man in the hat’s warning, knowing that I wasn’t likely to go away for it? Perhaps. It was risky though. Wouldn’t he have just tried giving me a kicking first to see what effect that had? If he was willing to take the risk of killing Dominic and leaving him in my flat, surely he would have risked just killing me. I scoured my mind for answers and for small pieces of information, something I knew or had seen but had overlooked. There was something, I was sure of it. A picture which had struck me. I remembered a feeling I’d had, when I’d gone to see Dominic, a feeling that someone was watching my car. There was that but there was something else too, I knew it. But I couldn’t dredge it up.

  The phone rang. I picked up and it was Sir Peter Morgan. He sounded tentative and apologetic. He’d heard what had happened to me but he didn’t know all the details. He knew that I’d been beaten up and arrested, that a boy had been murdered and left in my apartment. One of the officers had phoned him and warned him off employing me.

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘And don’t blame yourself. When you take a case you have to accept what might come with it.’

  I thought that
would be all but Sir Peter said that in spite of the police he still wanted me to carry on.

  ‘You’re close,’ he said. ‘You must be. To whoever killed Edward. I’m very sorry about the boy but nevertheless it shows that you had found something out. Getting attacked and then having someone try to frame you. You must carry on.’

  Again, there was an obsessive quality to Sir Peter’s voice. I told him I’d think about it. I had some people to talk to and I’d decide what to do after that. I didn’t want to carry on. I wanted to go and lie on a beach. I rang off and thought about what Morgan had said. Clay thought it too; I was close. I didn’t feel close. I felt like I was playing blind man’s buff and I kept bumping into the furniture.

  I pulled on my jacket. Apart from the fact that I’d been officially warned off, I was in no state to go and see anyone; the T-shirt I was wearing had a tear in it and I hadn’t showered, shaved or eaten properly for days. Apart from the food though, I didn’t care. The way my face was arranged a suit would not have made me look any better, and a shave would have been as cosmetically effective as a window polish on a written-off Renault Megane. I would still look fucked. I called a cab, asked them to give me twenty minutes, locked my office and walked to the cafe.