The Fly Guy

by Colum Sanson-Regan

  “Good, I’m glad you like it. Wait till you see my tattoos.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Do you? Do you like it?”

  “I’ll get used to it I think. It’s nice not having a beard. Weird. Feels odd you know? But I like it. And you’re right, it is a damn fine chin. Hey, you’re still in your dressing gown. Come on, get inside. First though …” he opened the car door and took out a plastic bag. Inside was a shoe box.

  “What’s this? For me?”

  “No, for me,” Martin said and pulled back the lid. Inside was a pair of running shoes, with black and red stripes down the side.

  “What? You’re going to start …”

  “Well, just around the estate you know.”

  “Martin, I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m not going to do a marathon or anything, don’t get your hopes up. It’s not like I’m suddenly going to be an athlete. Just a bit of running.”

  Alison looked again at the running shoes and stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.

  “I think you’re great,” she said.

  “I haven’t done it yet, I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “Yeah, but most people don’t bother even trying. Are you going to start today? It’s not raining. Can we go out? I would love a walk, wouldn’t that be nice? Have you smelt the air?”

  “I can smell coffee. Let’s get you inside, you’re not dressed, come on.” He put his arm around her and they walked together away from the car and through the front door. They didn’t mention the argument the night before. Martin didn’t ask how the dinner had gone. Alison didn’t ask what he had done for the night. The clouds drifted further apart, thinning as they spread, letting the blue and the sun pour through, rolling its way over the streets of the new estate and to the hills beyond.

  * * *

  Martin started to jog around New Acre estate every morning. As Alison pulled out of the driveway he would wave her goodbye and tie the laces of his running shoes. He would close the door and put the key in the zip pocket of his shorts and set off.

  It took him a while to get used to moving the weight of his own body at more than a walking pace. At first he pushed himself too hard too quickly and by the time he was at the second turning he was bent over double, hands on his knees, with his heart thudding in his chest. Only on the third day did he find his natural pace. He started to take different routes around the estate, exploring every road and cul-de-sac, until by the end of the week he had found a good circuit.

  The tarmac beneath his feet was not as tough as he had thought it would be, there was a slight give, a sponginess, not like the streets of the city. His route took him out of his driveway and right, straight down Paxton Drive, past the turning for Scott Close and Barry Close, then across the road and left down Wyatt Way.

  The houses on Wyatt Way changed. The driveways were wider and the gaps between the houses were more pronounced. There was an extra window in the upstairs although the houses didn’t seem any wider than the ones on Paxton Drive. As Martin jogged down the slight incline of Wyatt Way he would glance up at the extra upstairs windows of the houses, hoping to see evidence of elaborate lives, imagining the extra room stretching the possibilities of the lives lived within, but never saw anything behind the glass.

  Once he reached the end of Wyatt Way, Martin turned right along Macintosh Close, and here a wooden fence ran straight along beside him while across the road the houses nudged back closer together and the driveways squeezed back to their regular size. Sometimes a cat, thin and grey, would leap up from the path in front of him, balancing on the thin slats of wood and eyeing him, watching him coming closer, out of breath and sweating, before lithely disappearing into the greenery on the other side.

  Martin didn’t encounter many people while running. New Acre didn’t have a local shop or any kind of commercial centre within it, so there was no reason for people to walk. He did pass the occasional woman walking a dog or pushing a pram, and there was a cursory exchange of nods, but that was it. Only at the edges of the estate did he have to consider moving aside for anything. That was where the bushes and trees had started to stretch their branches over the wooden fence, making a slow effort to reclaim the space as their own, and Martin ducked a bit or ran on the road until another house stood between him and the countryside.

  When he reached the end of Macintosh Close, Foster Road curved back up the hill again and joined to Scott Road Martin steeled himself for the climb back up to his house. Here he didn’t look at the houses, he had his head down, focusing on lifting his knees and his feet, one after the other, feeling the strain in his calves and the sweat on the back of his neck and the burn in his lungs as he pushed himself up the hill.

  The first time Martin took this route, all the way around New Acre and back up the hill, he got through his front door and went straight for the sink. He poured himself a pint of water and held himself up on the sink edge, gulping it down before slumping to the floor and listening to his heart race, feeling his neck tighten with every breath. His chest ached with every breath like an iron plate compressing his lungs and his thighs ached and burned. This is what change feels like, he thought. Like it wants to kill me.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty

  Lucy is submerged in a dark dreamless sleep when the knock on Franz’s door comes. She hears it dimly, as if it is a memory she is trying to recall but keeps slipping away. Franz is at the door, just in his underwear.

  Lucy opens her eyes and leans over the arm of the sofa to see the shape of a huge man in the hallway. It’s not Gregor. Her throat constricts and her stomach drops. Why is Gregor not here? Who has come for her?

  Franz is asking the same questions to the man at the door. The replies come in a soft lilting accent. It is a voice which offers words rather than putting them down. She relaxes immediately. It’s Spike.

  Franz lets him in, turning around and calling, “Lucy, wake up sweetie, your chaperone is here, and it’s Spike, you lucky girl.” Spike squeezes down the narrow hallway and through the door. Lucy lies back on the couch and pulls the blanket over her.

  “Lucy, I’ve come to get you. Gregor’s been delayed,” he says, “and won’t make it home tonight. He sent me to get you.”

  “You’re taking me home?”

  “Well, no. Gregor doesn’t want you at his house alone tonight.”

  Spike is too big for the flat, his head nearly touches the ceiling and the table and chairs next to him look small and fragile.

  Franz steps from behind his huge frame and looks up to him.

  “Well, she can just stay here.”

  “No, she has to come with me.”

  “Is that okay with you, babes?”

  Lucy nods.

  “Okay, just close the door on your way out. Goodnight, sweetheart.”

  Franz leans down and gives her a kiss on the cheek. As he squeezes past Spike he runs his hand across his chest and says, “Nice to see you big boy.” Spike is eyeing everything in the room, the phone and the box of weed on the table, the cheap prints of old cigarette advertising on the wall, the bookshelf stuffed full with fashion magazines.

  When Lucy sits up and asks why Gregor can’t come and get her like he said he would, he looks surprised and says, “I thought you might know by now that with Gregor, it’s really best not to ask, it’s always complicated. Don’t worry,” he says, “where we are going is safe. Trust me.”

  In the car she says, “Spike, you would tell me if anything had happened to Gregor, wouldn’t you?”

  “Don’t worry,” Spike says, “he’s fine, this is just a precaution. You know how protective he can be.”

  Lucy looks out the window at the passing streets, so quiet at this time, so many shadows which now hide so much, but in a few hours in the daylight will have lost their mystery. She tells herself that there hasn’t been enough time since the message for anything to have happened. Anyway, she thinks, Stranstec alwa
ys likes things thoroughly prepared. He will move in on Gregor, but when he is ready, and not until he is sure it will work.

  Lucy says, “Can you put on some music?”

  Spike turns the radio on and the car is filled with the sounds of tinny electric guitars and drum beats which sound like a fly in a can. Lucy remembers the first time she saw Stranstec.

  * * *

  He was sitting obscured by a cloud of cigarette smoke. The desk in front of him was piled high with forged documents: passports, birth certificates, and work permits. She had heard the men in the truck talk about him, call him the captain. She put her papers on the table. He took them, scanning. Through the fogged-up window she could see the lights of waiting vans. The two girls who went before her were getting into one of them.

  She said, “I’m not going to be a prostitute.”

  He looked up at her, the cigarette dangling from his lip.

  “Listen,” he checked the papers for her name, “Marketa, is that your name?” She nodded. “Marketa, sweetie, when you see the difference between what your sisters get paid for sucking a cock good and what the poor bitches who clean and serve and slave all week get, you’ll be on your knees asking me to give you a letter of recommendation.”

  “They’re not my sisters. Let them do it.”

  Stranstec leaned back in his chair and put the cigarette out in the full ashtray. “Whatever, but if you came to this country to make good money, then …”

  “That’s why I came. And I will be rich. I will not have to spread myself for ten men a night to do it when I can do it for one. One who counts. Like you, I like you.”

  Stranstec sat back in his chair. “You don’t know me.”

  “And you don’t know me. But you do like me, don’t you?” she said.

  “Your English is very good, Marketa. What age are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “And why are you here?”

  “To make myself.”

  “To make yourself?”

  “To make me who I want to be.”

  A shout came from behind the door. “Boss! Another coming in!”

  She said, “Can we come to some arrangement? You and me?”

  He shouted back, “Wait!” He stood up and walked around to her, taking her by the arm, and led her back through the door she had just come through. There was a line of girls, all looking scared and unsure, and she passed their eyes without meeting them. Stranstec led her into a small narrow kitchen and said, “You will have to wait here. This will take a while. There is tea and coffee. Nothing to eat, or, wait …” He reached up into one of the door-less cupboards and pulled down a packet of biscuits. Then he left her and closed the door.

  She turned the tap on and held a cup beneath the flow of water, but her hand was shaking too much to hold it steady. She leaned against the worktop and tried to calm herself. It had worked. He was going to take her.

  Since she was a young teenager she had known she had a power that she could use. When she was fourteen she saw a phantom appear in the eyes of the principal of her school as she stood in front of him and played with the hem of her skirt. She learned that she could summon that black spirit into the eyes of men, and now when she had needed it most, she had done it again.

  That was how she got together with Stranstec. He had put her in an apartment and gave her money once a week. At first he used her only for short, almost apologetic, sexual visits, but as the weeks passed, he began to stay for longer, talking, making food for them both, bringing movies for them to watch together. He would bring marijuana for them to smoke or cocaine for them to snort, occasionally he’d arrive with a new outfit for her and a handful of speed tablets.

  She used the money he gave her to go to English lessons and attend computer classes. She bought a laptop and downloaded all of the ’30s swing jazz music she could. She would dance around her city apartment in her pyjamas, spinning around with her eyes closed following the deep loose sound of the double bass.

  She started to know the city. She had her favourite café, her favourite bar, her favourite cinema. Stranstec spoke of his plans to get rich. She wanted to go to university. She had seen her mother work two jobs, cleaning and stitching in a garment factory, and still have to come home every day to a cold leaking shell of a house without enough for the three of them. She had seen her father, rich with a thousand melodies, sicken and starve. She wanted to be comfortable, educated, always have enough.

  One day Stranstec told her he was going to leave his wife. The movie they had been watching had just finished. It was an evil spirit that moved from person to person who was responsible for the murders, which was why every time the detective caught a new suspect, they could never remember what they had done, and another sickening sadistic murder occurred somewhere else. It could never be stopped. She was lying across his lap in the darkness of the front room of her little flat as the credits rolled on a shot of the detective walking away into the city when he told her.

  “There’s something new coming to the street. It’s going to be big. One of my contacts gave me a sample and will be able to get me a bag. It’s going to make somebody a lot of money, and I can be that somebody. But I’ll need your help.”

  She sat up and faced him. He brushed her hair back away from her face, over her ears, and leaned close to her.

  “You’re the only one who can do this, but once it’s done, I can leave Julie, and we will have enough to go wherever we want and do whatever we want to do.”

  “What about the girls?”

  “I’ve been tired of running girls for a while now, you know that. Ever since I found you I’m tired of sending scared sweet faces to vans waiting in the cold. Since I’ve been with you I don’t want to do that anymore, and here’s my chance, our chance, to get out. At least with drugs, people have a choice. They choose to take or not to take, and this stuff, Spiral, a lot of people are going to want to take it. I’m serious, this is going to hit big.”

  “What is it you want me to do?” she said and he took her hands and told her.

  He told her all about Gregor, and how he could get her to him. Gregor is a powerful man, and dangerous, but he knew how to play him. First there was Archie, but he would be no problem for her, that would be the easy part. He would set Archie up for Gregor to come. He wouldn’t be able to resist her. She would have to stick exactly to the plan, right to the end. It might take some time, and during that time Gregor could not suspect a thing. When he did come and get her, Spiral would be his and they could do whatever they wanted.

  “And you promise you’ll leave Julie? It will be just you and me?”

  “I promise. Just you and me.”

  “Ok, I will do it. But I will have to not be me. I will have another name. Lucy.”

  “Lucy?”

  “Lucy. It was what my daddy called his saxophone. Lucy.”

  “When you go to Archie, you will have nothing, like you just came from the van. Okay? Like you never met me. You’ve got to forget that you met me.”

  The last time she had seen Stranstec, he had kissed her and held her close.

  “You’ve changed my life,” he said, “and now you can change both our lives forever. Be careful. Just stick to the plan, and I will come and get you. Remember who you are. Lucy. Lucy. Remember, you have nothing, you are nobody. You are nobody. Lucy.”

  * * *

  She tells herself this again as she sits in the passenger seat and watches the empty shadowy city pass by. Remember who you are. Nobody. Now she’s glad it was Spike and not Gregor who picked her up. She would not even allow herself to think of Stranstec when Gregor is with her, for fear that Gregor can see straight through her, straight to the images that now run through her mind. Just the thought of being in his car now makes her feel suddenly uncomfortable and vulnerable, as if she has just realised she is naked.

  She looks at Spike, his massive bulk, his big arms extending to the steering wheel, his head nearly touching the roof of the car. She can see
why Gregor entrusts him with so much. He doesn’t ask him to deceive, though. It’s hard to imagine Spike lying. Lucy looks at the scorpion running from his collar bone, up the side of his neck, its tail curling around behind his ear. She imagines it carries messages from his body straight to his brain. The messages don’t get corrupted. There is a directness, an uncomplicated physicality that Spike possesses.

  But if Gregor wanted to hurt her, he wouldn’t send Spike to do it. When she heard Gregor talking on the phone to Spike he didn’t say, You’ll have to take him out, he said, I’ll have to take him out. She had seen Gregor’s eyes as he cut into Archie’s ear and the blood erupted over his blade. She recognised that excitement, that flash of pleasure in him when Archie screamed, because she felt it too. It was a rush of adrenaline, like an electrical current activating every molecule in her being. Gregor had seen it in her. She wonders where Gregor is now. She imagines him leaning over a cowering figure, pulling the knife away, blood on the blade.

  The car passes shop fronts, shutters pulled down, lights off, homeless asleep in doorways. What she has to do now is forget about the message and re-inhabit the frail, helpless inconsequential Lucy; the nobody he took from the squalid flat that night. As the buildings get higher, she asks, “Where are we going?”

  Spike replies, “You’ll stay with someone I know. She’s nice, you’ll like her.”

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The running got easier. The steady rhythm of his feet and the quickening of his breath liberated his mind. He knew exactly where he was going—Paxton, past Scott and Barry, to Wyatt, Macintosh, Foster, and back to Paxton. He knew exactly what he would see—the new dark tarmac streets, the thin squashed red brick houses topped with grey tiles, the green of the small patch of grass, the brown fence holding the countryside at bay.

  By the time he got back to the house, often running the route twice, passing the same woman and her dog or pram, he would shower and shave. After his showers he had started spending time looking at himself in the long bedroom mirror. He noticed his waist was slimmer, his legs were toned. He spent time looking at his face from different angles, lifting his chin, turning his head, to see if the double chin which he had noticed once his beard was gone was receding. He thought it was. If I keep this up, he thought, I might change completely.