After drying off he would sit down and type. He tried now to move the story forward, tried to remember what it was he had done in those short stories for Noire which had started this process, and sat down in his upstairs back room, Ready now, he thought, ready now to get to grips with this story. His breathing as he sat in front of the glowing screen was fuller than before, he thought, as if before he started running he hadn’t been doing it right. His note-taking was more elaborate now. He tried to write every idea that ran through his head. The walls were becoming crowded, pages with diagrams, words underlined, and timelines with red marker points for crucial plot interventions.
Alison was still late getting back from the city. There were always meetings or extra paperwork which kept her at the office. Martin promised her he would take her out somewhere, They needed a night out together, he said. On this day, as he stood in the shower, watching the white soap slither down his slimmer, toned legs, he thought of a night at the opera. He stepped out of the shower and put a towel around himself, and went straight into his writing room. He had just booked two seats at the opera for them when his phone rang. His hair was still wet and as he looked at the call display drops fell and obscured the name.
It was Ozzy.
“It’s safe to go back in the water,” Ozzy said. “Billy’s gone.”
“Billy’s left ICE?”
“Not left, he was fired.”
“That’s fantastic news! Rob finally saw sense or what?”
“No, well, Billy was off duty and drinking in the bar and he came on to Sophie a bit heavy.”
“Like how?”
“Nothing he hasn’t done before—commenting on her tits, standing way too close—that kind of thing.”
“Yeah, so? He’s been doing that to staff since I was there.”
“Yeah, but Sophie has got together with Rob, so now it’s not just harassing a member of staff, it’s coming on to the boss’s piece.”
“Ha! So Rob got rid of him!”
“He’s gone.”
“Great! That’s cheered me up. Billy never was much good at following what was going on around him. Did he not know they were together?”
“Apparently not. And get this, he cried when Rob fired him.”
“Ha! Even better!” Martin unwrapped the towel from his waist and started drying his hair with one hand while talking. “So let’s hope whoever takes his place in the chain isn’t such an idiot, although I do think you’d have to look pretty hard.”
“Well, not quite as bad, but no angel either.”
“Who? Do I know them?”
“Me.”
“You? Rob’s put you on duty manager?”
“Yup. Watch out ICE, there’s a new boy at the helm.”
“Well, you have done your time. That’s great, man. So do you get to boss people around now then? Has the power gone to your head yet? Have you shaved the pirate ’stash into something a bit neater and more central?”
“Not yet. Marty, come back to the club, man, even for a few shifts, I’ll sort it for you. You should come back. How do you manage it, not working? I mean, don’t you get bored?”
“We should hook up again, it’s been a while, just let’s not go back to the Sugar Club. Let’s find somewhere else to go.”
“Oh, yeah, that was the last time wasn’t it? I haven’t been back since, although I did hook up with a cracking brunette that time if I remember right. Pity her husband was there, too. Yeah, there’s a thing, Zoe’s off the scene.”
Martin’s breath froze. He stood up and half sat down for a second, pausing there with his legs bent then sat slowly down, his bare damp skin slowly sticking again to the seat.
“What, you stopped seeing her then?”
“Everybody stopped seeing her.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Nobody’s seen her for weeks, she’s gone right off the radar. Her family have been putting photos of her all over the place, in the city, on the Internet. Missing.”
Martin stood up again. He had the towel over his head and he pressed the towel to his hair, slowly rubbing from his neck to his forehead.
“How long ago?”
“Eh, weeks ago, I guess just after all that shitty weather, yeah, just when the sun came out, she was gone. I had the police at my place.”
“The police?”
“Yeah, but it was just routine, I mean, the girl that she whacked in the Alabama ended up pressing charges, so they were looking for her in relation to that, assault charges. That’s why everyone reckons she’s gone to ground.”
“Are you worried?”
“Worried?”
“Yeah, worried, I mean, she was pretty stuck on you, wasn’t she? Isn’t it odd that she hasn’t contacted you?” He was walking around the room, dry now, naked but for the towel which he moved from over his head to his shoulder.
“She’s probably stuck on someone else. She was getting a bit clingy anyway. It’s only her family who have made a big deal with the missing persons thing, and she didn’t give much of a shit about them anyway. People come and people go, man, it’s not always a big dramatic thing.”
“You don’t think anything’s happened to her then?”
“I think anything could have happened to that chick. She was nuts, yeah?”
“Yeah. She was.” Martin was facing away from the door, with his back to the computer screen, with the towel over his shoulder, looking out the back window. The trees were coming on, their lower branches spreading and their tips reaching higher. Martin thought of the space beneath them, the unseen hollow. There could be someone sitting, hunched there, looking straight at me right now, he thought, and I wouldn’t see them.
***
Chapter Twenty-Two
Night has had the city for hours and all of the lights in the house are off when Scorpion gets back in the big black car and reverses out of his drive. The red rear lights are high and bright, and Henry follows them at a distance. He lets them go out of sight and turns on his tracker. Scorpion goes toward the river then swings east, through the quiet night-time streets of the suburbs, past business parks and retail outlets, empty and huge, still illuminated by giant lamps shining on the brand symbols.
It’s nearly three by the time the Scorpion’s car stops outside a row of apartments. By the time Henry pulls up to where he can see the car, Scorpion has gone into the building. About ten minutes later he’s walking out with a thin blonde, her bleached hair cut short in a bob style, who looks like she’s just woken up. She’s rubbing her eyes, and he’s talking to her, leaning his head down to her as they cross the road. Her features are straight and symmetrical, as if she has been cast from a prototype. There’s something in her, the way she holds her jacket around her shoulders, the way she neither acknowledges nor ignores Scorpion that draws Henry in. There is an energy, a strength in her that eclipses Scorpion’s intimidating bulk.
One thing he is sure of is that this is not the Scorpion’s lover. They know each other, Henry thinks, but are not friends. Still, there is nothing to suggest she doesn’t want to go with him, there’s no hesitation as she climbs into the passenger seat. Scorpion looks around before getting in the other side, scanning the road. His eyes slide over Henry’s car and he closes the door.
The engine starts and he pulls out onto the road. Henry follows him back toward the heart of the city, through the empty streets, the dark shell waiting for life to crawl back into it. They turn east and drive to the university. Near the university are roads and roads of identical student flats. He sees the black four by four turn right onto what he knows is a cul-de-sac. Henry pulls up and walks around the corner, staying in the shadows.
The night is cool and still, and the sound of the engine is the only noise on these quiet streets. Scorpion drives to the end of the road, to the last block of flats on the right. Beyond that there is a big iron fence blocking the campus. Henry watches as Scorpion gets out of his car and goes around to open the door for the blonde. They walk tog
ether to the foot of the apartment block and buzz on the door.
He looks around as they wait, straight down the road to where Henry is standing. His face is hard and serious, like a statue on a city main street, a monument to a triumphant warrior. Henry is sure that he is far away and covered in shadow enough not to be seen, but he feels a chill run through him as if Scorpion has just looked straight into his eyes. He is being much more watchful now than he was early in the day.
The blonde is looking around too, taking in the detail of the dark street. Henry sees Scorpion speak into the com button and push open the door. The two of them disappear inside.
Henry walks to the foot of the building and then across the road to the apartment block opposite. He thinks about pushing some com buttons to get the door open, and then sees that it is off the latch. He goes up the stairs and finds a spot on a dark corridor with a window out to the road. The buildings are identical so he can see into the corridor opposite. He scans the windows of the building. There are some with lights on, but most curtains are drawn. He looks for silhouettes, for movement, but can see none. He waits a long time in the darkness.
He is used to this, watching from the shadows, observing and recording the actions of strangers, people obeying motivations which he does not have to justify. When he was on the force every case drew him in, he became part of it all, tangled in the messy lives of people hurting and deceiving each other. Now his job was to be detached. To observe and report.
Through the window to his left he can see over the big iron fence to the buildings and lawns of the university. Everything is so measured and neat when there are no people to blur the lines. The apartment block is new. Henry can sense there is a tightness in the fixtures, that the walls haven’t been lived in for long. The lives within the building haven’t worked their way into the walls yet.
He has a cigarette in his mouth but doesn’t light it, just rolls it back and forth over his lower lip.
A door opens on the corridor opposite and the big Scorpion steps out. He is talking to someone who is much smaller than him and standing just inside the door. The light from inside the apartment shines on him and Henry can see that he is smiling. His face has turned gentle, his eyes have softened. He walks away down the corridor and the door closes.
Henry stays until he sees Scorpion leave from the front door of the block of flats. He watches him from above as he gets in his big black car and pulls away. Then he walks down the stairs to the door. He steps outside and lets the door close gently, leaving it balanced on the latch without closing. He takes a lighter from his pocket and lights the cigarette. He can hear birds singing from the university compound. The notes reverberate around the buildings. The darkness is slowly dissolving. Daylight is finding its way back into the city.
It’s ten to five.
* * *
Henry drives back to the house on the elm-lined road. The curtains are still drawn and all the lights are off. The sky is more blue than black now and in the eerie half-light he climbs over the gate at the side of the house and goes into the back garden.
The back of the house is not like the freshly-mowed clean front. The patch of grass in the back yard is long and unkempt and smells of cat faeces. Dead leaves and debris from the trees lie scattered on the concrete. The back door is a glass sliding door and has a thick curtain on the other side. There are layers of spider webs around the door. The kitchen windows have blinds all the way down on the inside. They are blocked off too. There is a build-up of grime and dust and webs around their edges. They have not been opened in a long time.
He steps back and looks at the upper windows. None of them are open. The only way in is going to be through the front door, or forcing the latch on the sliding door at the back. It’s getting too light now. He’s going to need to wait until the glasses man leaves the house before he can get in.
He looks again at the back sliding door, and sees his shadowy reflection in the dusty grimy glass, a distorted shape in the pre-morning light. In one cold moment the shadows around him solidify and tense up, as if ready to pounce, and he sees his reflection as that dark misshapen figure he followed to the docklands.
Henry’s heart stops and he freezes. The reflection does not, it slides jerkily off the glass and disappears into the shadows. The moment is gone.
Henry climbs back over the fence and out onto the road. He sees the first lights come on in a bedroom across the road. People’s days are beginning. He walks back to his car. It’s time for him to get home.
In his kitchen he leans over the map. Lomax Road. He takes a gold dot and carefully tears it in half. It tears unevenly, like a waning half-moon. He sticks it in the middle of Lomax. The red dots make a jumbled uneven pattern. The golden moon is right in the middle.
He climbs into bed, feeling the clean white sheets against his skin. He reaches up to close the gap in the curtains, to keep the band of daylight out, then flops onto his back. Within minutes he is in a deep sleep. An hour later, the mechanical digger starts its daily task of breaking up the road outside.
***
Chapter Twenty-Three
Alison was late again. When she got home, Martin told her that she should get out her best dress because he had booked them seats at the opera. She threw her arms around him and squealed.
“Tonight?”
“Yes, straight after dinner we’ll go into the city.”
They had never been to the opera before, but it was something that Alison had talked about. This production was Strauss’s Salome. Martin had at least heard of it before, so thought it was something they could follow, and the tickets were buy today, half-price.
After dinner Alison disappeared upstairs while he tidied up the kitchen and front room. He took the vacuum from under the stairs and unwound the lead, the high-pitched vibrating drone getting even higher as he pushed it into the corners and along the side of the couch. He ran over the carpet again and again and again until Alison came back downstairs. She looked elegant in a close fitted black dress with her hair falling generously over her shoulders.
“You look beautiful, really classy,” Martin said.
“It’s not too tight is it? I think I’ve put on weight,” she said as she patted her stomach, pulling it in then relaxing again, watching her stomach move in and out.
“You look fantastic.” He kissed her cheek as he passed her and went upstairs. He put on a clean white shirt and a suit jacket and came straight downstairs again.
“Off we go?” he said.
“This is exciting,” Alison said as they stepped outside the door. Martin hoped that the neighbours would glance out their windows and see this glamorous couple emerge, see that they had somewhere special to go. Alison walked around to the passenger’s side of the car and stood as Martin said, “Allow me madam,” and opened it for her.
As she sat into the passenger seat Martin saw a necklace he didn’t recognise in the space between the seat and the door. He was just about to mention it when he saw next to the amber string of beads were two laminated cards and some pieces of crumpled paper. A cold fist formed in Martin’s stomach as he caught sight of a face on one of the laminated cards. It was Zoe.
“Oh this will be nice,” Alison said as she pulled the seat belt over her shoulder. “The opera, how grand.” She smiled up at Martin as he closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side with a tense panic rising through this body. His mouth went totally dry, his tongue seemed to grow. He stopped for a second before he opened his door. He slowed down his breathing and opened the door, and sat into the car.
“Yeah, it’s about time we did something like this. Do you know the story? The story of Salome?” He turned the key in the ignition.
“Are you okay babe?” Alison said. “You look all pale.” Martin started to reverse the car.
“I’m feeling a bit off, maybe something I ate earlier, but I’ll be fine, don’t worry, we’re going to have a great night.”
“Well, I’ll drive if you a
ren’t feeling right.”
“No, it’s nothing.” He straightened the car on the road and put it into gear. “I’ll be fine.”
As Martin watched for traffic at each junction and eased the car from the slip road to join the motorway he was thinking how he could get rid of the debris from Zoe’s bag. It had been there, unnoticed for weeks now, her unblinking eyes looking out from the laminated card at the grimy grey carpet at the bottom of the door, and now all it would take was one glance from Alison, one movement of her hand down to side of the seat, and their worlds would crash together. He would have to go back to the car once they had parked up, on the pretence of having forgotten something. What could he forget? What could he empty from his pocket now without Alison noticing?
“So what’s this whole thing about then?” Alison asked. “Salome? Is it classical Greek stuff?”
“It’s biblical I think. John the Baptist is involved, and Herod, but I don’t know the details. Best to come at it blind, I’d say,” Martin replied.
“But will we understand it? Operas aren’t in English are they?”
“There will be notes on the programme we can follow.”
“I’m very excited,” Alison said, and reached her hand across, putting it on Martin’s lap and squeezing his thigh. “It’s a lovely surprise.”
“Well, we are due a night out.” Martin smiled at her.
She did look beautiful. Her hair framed her face and her eyes shone in the dull light of the car. As Alison looked at him now, every muscle in his body ached and it felt like his lungs had contracted. He would have to get parked as close as possible to the theatre and run out during the intermission to gather Zoe’s necklace and cards from the car and dump them somewhere. For a second he saw Zoe sitting where Alison was, her bleached blonde hair wet, her white jacket still spattered with rain, her short skirt riding up to the tops of her thighs and her legs slightly apart and her eyes half closed, her mouth opening and closing as if fighting for breath, slipping in and out of consciousness.
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