End of the World Blues

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

“Of course,” said Neku, wondering if Sylvia meant the mask or the paperweight. Stepping back, Neku looked around more openly. It was hard to imagine how anyone could make money from the objects on display. At least, that was what Neku thought until she asked Sylvia the price of the mask. Buying it would take a substantial slice of the money Neku had left with Mrs. Oniji. One wouldn’t have to sell too many objects like it to pay the bills.

  “Can you tell me what happened to Mary?”

  “She killed herself.” Sylvia hesitated on the edge of saying something else. “I don’t know why…” Whatever she’d been planning to say, Neku guessed it wasn’t that.

  “Boyfriend trouble?”

  Sylvia shook her head.

  “Money?”

  The other woman sighed. “Look,” she said. “Do you two want a coffee? We close at 3 pm on Sunday anyway and there’s a place on Goodge Street…”

  CHAPTER 33 — Sunday, 24 June

  Neku let Charlie take her hand on the way back from the café. He did this almost casually, his fingers having brushed hers a few seconds earlier; by accident, she’d thought at the time.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Neku, “I’m fine.” There were obviously a dozen things Charlie wanted to ask her about their visit to the Canterville Gallery, but he kept his peace and said nothing. Neku was impressed. Discretion was a valuable commodity in any man.

  “So,” Charlie said. “Are we going home now?”

  Home…her fingers pulled free as Neku tripped on his word and Charlie stepped out of her reach.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” said Neku. She could almost feel his sideways glance, which slid away when she turned to him. So she took Charlie’s hand again, smiled, and bent her head, listening as he began to talk about some incredibly good band due to play in a basement in Camden. As Charlie’s words trailed to a halt Neku realised he’d been inviting her out.

  “Sounds good,” she said.

  He smiled the rest of the way back to Mary’s flat. “Wow,” said Charlie, as they turned under the arch and he saw the flower boxes, black front doors, and tiny white-painted houses that made up Hogarth Mews. “Cool place.”

  “Not bad,” Neku admitted. Pulling the key from her back pocket, Neku opened the front door to find Sophie doing something complicated to a racing bicycle in the hall.

  “This is Charlie,” said Neku.

  “Hi,” said Sophie, offering her hand; which meant the first thing Neku had to do on reaching the flat was find kitchen paper so Charlie could clean bike chain grease from his fingers.

  “She’s an artist,” said Neku.

  Charlie nodded sourly, as if he’d suspected as much.

  There was cola and milk in the fridge, fresh bread in a wooden box next to the sink, and a bowl full of pears and bananas on the tiny work surface. Rice and spaghetti had been stacked by the box. Kit had even found instant noodles that came with sachets of miso soup. The only flaw was the fridge being warm, because the electricity still needed to be turned back on, and gas resolutely refusing to hiss from the range.

  “You’ve been cut off?”

  “No,” said Neku. “We’re waiting for it to be turned back on.”

  Neku should have been able to read his expression. She’d have been able to read him if he was one of her brothers. All the same, it was only when Charlie mouthed we that his scowl made sense.

  “I share with a friend,” she said. “It’s his flat.”

  “Right,” said Charlie. “I see.”

  No, you don’t… instead of saying this Neku took a Coke from the fridge and a couple of wineglasses from the cupboard and led Charlie out onto the roof, where her mattress aired in the sun, her pillow rested against the side of the little wooden hut, and her sheet swung gently from a washing line in the breeze. Having dumped her shoulder bag in the hut, Neku returned with a notebook, her ink block, and a brush.

  So young, she thought, watching Charlie’s eyes flick from mattress to hut to pillow. “You thought Kit and I…”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You did,” Neku said.

  Charlie wasn’t good at sulking. In fact he lasted less time than it took a wineglass full of diet cola to lose its bubbles, which was barely any time at all. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe I did.”

  Neku smiled.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She nodded, wondering which of the dozen questions it would be.

  “Are you really planning to buy that gallery?”

  “No,” Neku said, dripping flat Coke onto a saucer and grinding her ink block into the liquid until it was thick enough to use. She drew a circle, because she always began everything with a circle, then began to note down everything she could remember from her conversation with Sylvia No-last-name. “I was lying…”

  Charlie looked sweetly shocked.

  “Unsettle people,” said Neku. “It’s one of the first rules of control. Unsettle them and they’ll answer your questions or do what you want because they’re too busy being unsettled to close down or object…My brothers taught me that.”

  “You have brothers?” Charlie asked. Which was the point Neku burst into tears. And that was how Kit found them. Neku on her knees, an abandoned brush on the tiles in front of her, and a boy, all curly blond hair and bat-wing cheek bones, frozen with embarrassment as he tried and failed to comfort her.

  “Meet Charlie,” said Neku through bitter sobs.

  Charlie tried to shake hands.

  “What did you do?”

  Charlie let his hand drop. “I asked Neku about her brothers.”

  “Brothers?” Kit said.

  CHAPTER 34 — Monday, 25 June

  Kit was the one to see Charlie out, offering his hand at the last minute, if only to tell the boy that he didn’t hold what had happened against him.

  “See you some time,” said Kit.

  Charlie nodded doubtfully.

  When Kit got upstairs the shower was running and there Neku stayed, washing away whatever it was she needed to wash away with an hour’s worth of cold water. She came out of the room shivering and wrapped in a towel, trailing wet footprints onto the roof garden, where she spent the rest of the afternoon, plugged into her MP3 player, with a pile of Japanese police files, a notebook, and a cup of coffee Kit had got from a local café cooling on the tiles in front of her.

  The first two times Kit went to see her, she looked up politely and waited, going back to her papers when she realised he was just fussing.

  “You knew this woman…Mrs. Kate?” she asked, when he came out a third time, still fussing, with a bowl of takeout noodles and a fork, because he’d been unable to find wooden chopsticks. She took the noodles without comment, placing them next to the coffee.

  “Kate’s mentioned in there?”

  Neku nodded. “Who gave you these files?”

  “Major Yamota,” said Kit. “They’re to do with the fire at Pirate Mary’s. I wasn’t allowed the ones to do with Yoshi.”

  “I wondered about that,” Neku said, crossing something off her list. “Most of these are statements from the fire officer, the first policeman on the scene, the paramedic who gave you a sedative. There’s a forensic report from the Police Scientific Bureau, but there are other papers not to do with the fire.”

  “They must have got in by mistake,” said Kit.

  Neku’s mouth twisted. “Japanese police,” she said, “don’t make that kind of mistake. Not unless they intend to.”

  “What are the papers?”

  She hesitated. “A report on a murder. A list of collectors known to buy stolen ceramics. A credit check on Pirate Mary’s. One of the reports links you to a career criminal known to be making trips to Tokyo. Kathryn Robbe-Duras, nee O’Mally.”

  “She never took Pat’s name,” said Kit. “And she’s retired.”

  “This is the woman No Neck mentioned? The one who called you this morning?”

  “Yes,
” said Kit.

  “She’s an old friend?”

  Kit shook his head. “An enemy,” he said. “An old enemy.”

  Neku nodded. It seemed she could understand that.

  The buzzer sounded at midnight. Since the row of buttons beside the front door was illuminated and Sophie had already warned Kit that drunks used the courtyard to piss or worse, he ignored it. At which point the noise got louder as whoever it was began to kick the door instead.

  Scrambling for his jeans, Kit reached the landing in time to hear Sophie open the door herself. “Prove it,” he heard her say, and a second later the front door shut and Sophie began stamping her way upstairs. She was swearing.

  “It’s the police,” she said. “Well, one of them. A big fucker. Apparently he wants to talk to you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Outside. I told him to get a warrant if he wants to come in. Unless, of course, he thinks we’re terrorists, in which case I suggested he organise back-up and a few guns…”

  “And what did he say?” Kit could imagine what a Japanese policeman would have said. Actually, Kit couldn’t, because he doubted anyone in Japan would leave a police officer on the doorstep, far less be that rude to them.

  “Some bollocks about Section 44. So I told him I used to be a lawyer.”

  “Were you?”

  Sophie shrugged. “A paralegal…It’s close enough. Do you want a witness? Because I can stay around if you need.”

  “It’ll be fine,” promised Kit.

  There were a dozen reasons why this was unlikely to be true. Desertion from the British Army had no statute of limitations. So the original arrest warrant was technically valid. And you didn’t go AWOL only to return to the place that issued the arrest warrant unless you were stupid, or had people like Mr. Oniji suggesting you go back to your own country for a while.

  And that was before Kit even factored in Kate O’Mally, his own guilt at Yoshi’s death, or his memories of Mary.

  “You certain?” Sophie asked.

  “Sure,” said Kit, nodding his thanks.

  “Whatever,” she said. “Call me if you need me…”

  “Mr. Noover?”

  “Nouveau,” said Kit, looking out into the half darkness. An officer in uniform was back-lit by lights from beyond the arch. Flicking on the hall lights, Kit saw the huge man blink.

  “Come in,” said Kit.

  “You don’t want to see my search warrant, sir?”

  “Have you got one?”

  A sour smile.

  “Whatever,” said Kit. “Come in anyway.”

  Without waiting to see if the officer would follow, Kit made his way towards the stairs and heard the front door click behind him. As the two of them passed the door to Sophie’s flat, her door opened slightly and then shut again.

  “She didn’t like me.”

  “It’s late,” said Kit. “You worried her.”

  “Really, sir? Well, people who don’t like the police worry me.”

  By the time they reached the top landing the officer was stopping for the occasional rest and gasping for breath. Kit found that oddly reassuring. “In here,” he said, undoing the door. “Let me get some candles…I’m waiting for the electric to come back on.”

  Only a candle was already burning and Neku stood in the kitchen doorway.

  “I heard noises,” she said.

  A flame lit her fingers, until Kit looked again and the match went out, leaving Neku outlined in flame and a thin sodium haze that filtered between the slats of a wooden blind. It didn’t help that Neku was dressed in her black jersey and very little else.

  “Go back to bed,” said Kit.

  The girl gave him a look, but disappeared as ordered.

  “How old is she?” asked the officer.

  Kit shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never asked.”

  Silence followed this answer. And when Kit finished finding a saucer for the candle, it was to find the huge man staring at him.

  “What?” said Kit.

  “You send her to your bed and you don’t know how old she is? People like you need to be more careful.” All pretence of politeness was gone, along with the sirs the officer had been dropping into his sentences like redundant punctuation.

  “She’s not going to my bed,” said Kit.

  He watched the officer leave the kitchen and count off the exits leading from the tiny hall; front door, half-open bedroom door, and one other, from behind which came the flush of a lavatory. As the officer watched, that door opened and Neku stalked out, stared straight through both of them, and left the flat. A second later, an unseen door crashed shut, rather louder than was necessary.

  “Roof garden,” said Kit. “She’s got a mattress.”

  The huge officer ran his fingers through thinning hair and wiped his hands on his trousers. The sheer smallness of Mary’s flat seemed to be giving him problems. “Mattress?” he said, before deciding not to take it further.

  Digging into his pocket, the man produced a leather wallet and flipped it open. A badge inside introduced him as Sergeant Samson. That was all Kit had time to see before the Sergeant flipped it shut and stuffed the wallet back into his jacket.

  “I’ve got some questions,” he said. “I’d be grateful if you’d answer them honestly…”

  “If I can,” Kit said.

  “You were a friend of Mary O’Mally?” The Sergeant obviously had no doubts that Kate’s daughter was dead.

  Kit nodded, embarrassed to feel almost sick with relief. It seemed the questions were about Mary, rather than him.

  “When did you last see her?”

  “About three days after the funeral of a friend…”

  “And how long ago was this?”

  PART II

  CHAPTER 35 — Flashback

  The love affair of Kit’s life began to unravel two weeks after Kit and Mary first made love and three weeks before Josh crashed his bike. It began unravelling in Mary’s bedroom at Seven Chimneys with an argument about cars.

  “Gently,” she said. Mary wasn’t happy to be squatting naked on top of Kit and kept glancing at her stomach. The first two fucks of that day had been great, but this was one too many and it was Kit’s fault for being greedy.

  “Here,” he said, folding a sheet around her shoulders. “Better?”

  Mary nodded.

  It was complicated, because Mary was going out with Josh. Well, technically…except Josh was in Paris for a fortnight with his parents. So he and Mary would need to talk when Josh got back.

  “You love me?”

  They’d been through this. The first time two weeks earlier, beside the potato field, as the sun edged its way between two hills and stained the spire of St. Peter’s with the first rays of dawn. Kit had been impressed that Mary waited until after he took off her clothes. “Of course I do,” said Kit, which had been his answer then.

  “Say it,” Mary demanded.

  So Kit did.

  “Mean it,” she said.

  “I’ll love you forever,” said Kit, and inside that second it was true.

  When he was done, Mary wiped between her legs and folded the soiled tissue inside a clean one, then stuffed three foil wrappers into the crumpled cardboard of a condom packet and folded a tissue around this. She left Kit to collect up the used rubbers and add these to her fist-sized ball of rubbish.

  “Take it with you,” said Mary.

  Kit looked at her.

  “We have a cesspit,” she explained. “Dad makes enough fuss about the pipes getting clogged with toilet paper. He’d freak if he discovered we’d blocked them with these.”

  “Okay,” said Kit. It felt odd to be in Mary’s bedroom, but not as odd as actually being at her house. Patrick Robbe-Duras and Kate O’Mally keep themselves to themselves. Jumped up, said half the village; the other half wondered which of the two had most to hide.

  A high wall ringed the garden and electric gates guarded the entrance with its white
pillars and two stone eagles. A turning circle in front of the huge yellow-bricked house was scuffed with tire marks from half a dozen cars and Kit’s own motorbike. Legoland, Josh’s father called it, but obviously not to Mary’s face.

  A black BMW 5 Series, a red XK Jaguar, a metallic blue Mini Cooper S convertible, and a new Land Rover were among the vehicles parked outside. They were all still there, visible from Mary’s bedroom window.

  “How many cars have you got?”

  “One,” said Mary, pulling a sheet over her breasts. “The Mini. The others belong to Mum or Dad…Why?”

  “Just wondered.”

  “Mum started out dirt poor,” Mary said. “You need to remember that.”

  He’d made her cross, Kit realised. Mary’s relationship with her mother was as complicated as his own with his father was simple. Kit hated the man, Kit’s father hated him, both of them knew exactly where they stood. “It doesn’t matter,” said Kit. “I was only wondering.”

  “Yeah, right…”

  At the gate Kit had to lean over to punch numbers into a keypad that hid itself beneath a stucco-coloured plastic cover. He entered Mary’s birthday from memory, and had just kicked his Kawasaki into gear when Kate O’Mally pulled up on the far side of the gate in a dark Mercedes. Armani sunglasses examined Kit, flicked to his bike, and returned to his face.

  The woman was busy lowering her window when Kit blipped his throttle, let slip the clutch, and roared out onto Morton Road, only just missing her wing mirror as he went past.

  Josh died in an accident on the B342. The evening was warm, the light was still good, and the road was dry. His Suzuki went out of control on a bend in the road and crashed into a two-hundred-year-old oak tree near the edge of Woodham Common. He died instantly, at least that was what the police told his parents.

  A piece in the Advertiser talked about the danger young men on bikes posed to themselves. A kinder piece, under a smiling photograph, highlighted Josh’s achievements, the grades he got at A level, and the fact he’d been offered a place by Trinity, his father’s college at Oxford.